Ecosystem Architecture: Orchestrating the "Shark Experience" Across Verizon, Edison Interactive, Club Car, & Greg Norman
Executive Summary
Recruited as a strategic UX Senior Strategist at Verizon to spearhead a high-profile multi-entity consortium featuring Club Car, Edison Interactive, and the Greg Norman Company. The mandate was to revolutionize the sport of golf by architecting a connected, media-rich IoT ecosystem powered by Verizon's network. By leading cross-organizational co-design workshops, multi-vendor persona alignment, and end-to-end service design mapping, I transformed a highly complex multi-brand digital strategy into a live, nationally deployed physical-and-digital product journey.
The Challenge: Multi-Entity Misalignment & Technical Silos
Designing a seamless, high-end consumer experience across four completely distinct corporate and technical entities introduced severe ecosystem friction:
Siloed Stakeholder Priorities: Verizon (network layer), Club Car (automotive/cart manufacturing), Edison Interactive (touchscreen software optimization), and the Greg Norman Company (premium media and branding) each brought conflicting demands to the target user matrix.
Cross-Platform Disconnection: The end-to-end user journey was fragmented between a mobile scheduling app, a ruggedized physical touch terminal on the golf cart, and dynamic cellular content delivery streams, with no single source of truth mapping them together.
High-Stakes Governance: Navigating a massive multi-organizational spotlight required bringing disparate engineering pipelines, product managers, and celebrity brand entities into immediate, productive alignment.
The Strategy: Co-Design Workshops & Cross-Ecosystem Service Mapping
Overcoming multi-vendor friction required moving the product layout completely out of isolation and establishing a unified, upstream service-mapping framework.
Multi-Entity Proto-Persona Realignment
I initiated the architecture by hosting a collaborative proto-persona framework at Verizon. By bringing product leaders from Verizon, device experience designers from Edison Interactive, engineers from Club Car, and marketing teams from Greg Norman into a single active loop, we aligned on a singular, validated target user matrix, effectively cutting out multi-month requirements bloat.
On-Site Service Design & Journey Mapping
To design the end-to-end interaction model, the entire multi-company cross-functional coalition deployed to Palm Coast, Florida. Working directly alongside Greg Norman Jr. and key product stakeholders, I facilitated an intensive service design mapping sprint. Together, we mapped the macro-experience from the initial digital mobile scheduling touchpoint, through course navigation logistics, and straight into the hardware-integrated Edison Interactive terminal built into the cart.
Synchronizing Hardware, Software, & Network
This exhaustive journey map served as the definitive blueprint. It defined exactly how Verizon’s network performance, Edison’s interactive touchscreen layout, Club Car’s electrical and hardware parameters, and Norman's media assets would react dynamically to a golfer's real-time location on the course.
The Impact
Successful National Commercial Launch: The service design blueprint successfully aligned all four partner organizations, culminating in the live commercial deployment of the "Shark Experience" across top-tier golf course networks nationwide.
Cross-Industry Technical Baseline: Established the definitive product and ecosystem requirements roadmap that seamlessly unified Verizon's network infrastructure with Edison Interactive's touchscreen UI and Club Car's manufacturing pipeline.
Secured Strategic Service Design Footprint: Proved the corporate value of Service Design within Verizon, shifting the UX discipline from an implementation function into a cross-organizational strategy engine leading multi-vendor initiatives.
High-Velocity Stakeholder Alignment: Compressed what is typically a multi-month corporate navigation and negotiation cycle into rapid, active requirements alignment over a single on-site co-design sprint.
Market Validation & Executive Industry Reception
Due to the cross-entity alignment achieved during early product definition, the final market launch received unprecedented validation from the highest echelons of the sporting and business landscape:
"The golf industry has been starved for real innovation that encourages real change for real growth and we believe Shark Experience is the answer. This solution enhances the golfer experience and is customizable to each individual’s preference."
— Greg Norman, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, Greg Norman Company
"The PGA TOUR is committed to being a leader in innovation and technology... It’s obvious that Greg Norman has had the same commitment throughout his legendary career, and that commitment is truly coming to life with the launch of “Shark Experience.” It has the potential to greatly innovate the golf course experience."
— Jay Monahan, Commissioner, PGA TOUR
"We have had an up-close look at the development of the Shark Experience. We applaud Greg and the entire team for their innovative approach in weaving together technology and content to improve the golf experience."
— Jeff Price, Chief Commercial Officer, PGA of America
End-User Field Impact: Re-Architecting the On-Course Journey
The holistic ecosystem mapping successfully accounted for real-world environmental and consumer friction, resulting in rapid, high-praise adoption from actual players on the course:
"It’s cool. It’s a big upgrade. It’s like going from Atari to an Xbox." — Steve B., Golfer
"I love it. I don’t like having to carry my speaker around and I forget it half the time. When I do bring it, it’s not charged... I’d much rather have it built in like that." — Jack J., Golfer
"The music is an automatic plus. And then, bringing my kids, if they don’t play they can watch TV... they've been playing with it ever since we got in the car." — Lindsey G., Golfer
