Having been established in the 15th Century, St Andrews is the oldest golf course in the world and as such is steeped in history, both in Scotland and abroad. The ask for the IBM iX Design Studio was to create a comprehensive design system which followed UI best practise while visually honouring a heritage brand in a modern age. We were also tasked with using this DS in a larger website redesign, reiterating St Andrew’s place as trailblazers in the golfing industry.
Through multiple workshops and co-working sessions, we helped client realise their vision of a daring dark-mode aesthetic, unlike anything traditionally accepted in the golf industry. In these sessions we also conceptualised new features and incorporated existing technologies to envision an immersive experience regardless of user location.

Our goal with the darker, atmospheric designs was to reflect the rugged terrain of the St Andrew’s Links and emphasise the stunning landscape imagery. We used gold accents and serif fonts to nod to the prestige of the site, while incorporating moments of movement and interaction components to make it modern and engaging. I used this digital branding with UI best practices to build an expansive design system, and then worked with developers to create a comprehensive react library.
We designed, built and deployed this site in four months, and statistics over two weeks show that 93% of our traffic was organic, with over 335k unique page visits - 57.8% of them being from the States. The average pages per session was 2.75, suggesting users were able to find the required information easily and efficiently.