The Toro Company
•
2023
Lynx Mobile is a field‑first companion built for real turf conditions: one‑hand operation, glove‑friendly targets, high‑contrast UI in sun glare, and seamless offline queuing. Instead of mirroring desktop, it turns the map into a spatial command center so techs can inspect, diagnose, and act without leaving the fairway.
I led the mobile reinvention end‑to‑end — ride‑along research, constraints‑driven UX, prototyping on‑device, and iterative field tests. This wasn’t a downsized Lynx Drive; it was a ground‑up system for motion, location, and intermittent signal.
Want the control‑room story? See the desktop case study →
Senior Designer
UX/UI Design
Design System Architecture
Prototyping & Testing
Stakeholder Alignment
Developer Handoff
Internal PM & Engineering Team
UX Research Support (in-house)
Field Technicians & Beta Users
A mobile system engineered around movement, sunlight, gloves, and spotty coverage.
Rather than mirror desktop patterns, Lynx Mobile restructures work around place and moment. The live map is the primary surface; flows are thumb‑reachable; actions queue locally when offline and reconcile automatically when signal returns.
The goal wasn’t to mirror desktop screens—it was to rethink interaction from the technician’s hand upward: map‑first context, one‑hand flows, offline resilience, and clear feedback at every step.
As Senior Designer, I led the end‑to‑end reinvention: research and framing, UX strategy, prototyping and testing, and final handoff. This case study covers how we turned a liability into the most‑used tool in the system.
We reinvented the map as a spatial command center—inspect, diagnose, and act in real time from a single, unified view.
— 14‑year Lynx user, California
Legacy, browser‑bound patterns slowed crews when they needed speed, clarity, and feedback.
Lynx is the backbone of large‑scale irrigation. But years of additive features—without a mobile‑first rethink—left the field experience cluttered, slow, and intimidating for new crews.
The legacy interface surfaced everything at once—dense tables, nested menus, and constant context‑switching. Power without clarity made mistakes too easy.
— Field Technician, Florida
On‑course ride‑alongs and on‑device tests shaped every interaction.
I rode along before sunrise, tested prototypes on bumpy cart paths, and reviewed support logs. We looked for friction created by environment — glare, gloves, motion — and rebuilt flows around those moments.
Superintendents were selected across regions to capture variance in climate, pressure schedules, and maintenance strategy. Interviews included Lynx veterans and users migrating from competing platforms.
In parallel with field research, we conducted deep-dive interviews with 12 internal stakeholders across product, engineering, support, and training. These sessions helped surface blind spots in the current experience, misalignments in team assumptions, and downstream challenges faced by support and onboarding teams. Their input directly shaped how we framed UX priorities and where we invested early design energy.
We identified three primary personas through interviews, fieldwork, and task analysis. Each played a critical role in the irrigation lifecycle and had unique tools, pressures, and behavioral patterns throughout the day. We also mapped their responsibilities to specific parts of the daily workflow: early morning system checks, mid-day troubleshooting, and end-of-day planning.
Mapping daily rhythms informed interface defaults, user roles, and permission‑based flows.
By shadowing superintendents and technicians across diverse courses, we documented every interaction with Lynx Mobile. The mapping exposed when users engaged—and how environment and mindset shaped effectiveness.
Dawn operations are the most critical period. Superintendents arrive before sunrise to assess overnight irrigation effectiveness and plan the day's maintenance.
Key Finding: Users lost up to 45 minutes each morning switching between six views to gather essentials. 84% kept paper backups due to low digital trust.
Critical Pain Point: “By the time I’ve checked the system, I’ve already missed something on the course.” — Lead Superintendent
The most dynamic period requires constant adaptation to changing conditions while managing multiple team activities.
Key Finding: Teams used an average of 3.7 methods (texts, radios, paper logs, photos) to track field work—creating gaps and handoff failures.
Critical Pain Point: “I’m constantly switching between my phone and the office system—information gets lost in the cracks.” — Field Technician
Evening preparation sets the stage for overnight success, requiring careful coordination of multiple systems and team handoffs.
Key Finding: 92% of overnight errors traced back to incomplete verification—because thorough checks were too difficult.
Critical Pain Point: “There’s no way to be certain everything is set without checking each screen. It’s nerve‑wracking.” — Lead Superintendent
This mapping transformed our approach. Rather than modernize screens, we engineered context‑aware workflows that adapt to time of day, environment, and team dynamics—driving a 60% reduction in morning configuration time and a 75% drop in overnight errors.
What users told us—and how we turned it into action.
Map functionality, especially on mobile, is a key Lynx differentiator. Users desire system status, diagnostic info, and system update ability from mobile map.
Superintendents report using only 20-30% of Lynx functionality. Explore ways (such as tooltips or animations) to enhance user discovery and understanding of Lynx features. Leverage AI to make relevant suggestions to help users save time and effort in Watering Plan updates in particular.
Superintendents desire insight into irrigation change history and more discoverable ways to limit system change access such as Advanced Set Up.
Users want efficient, flexible ways to group, reorder, and update their watering programs on desktop, mobile, and map. They seek a Watering Plan grid that is cleaner and makes it easier to view and focus on data and options of interest.
Users desire a Course Report that summarizes problems more succinctly and offers more context and guidance on how to diagnose issues.
Users want to view the Projected Flow while iterating on their Watering Plan to track and validate changes more efficiently.
— Course Tech, Georgia
Clarity under pressure, speed in the field.
Our objective was simple: make users feel informed, fast, and in control. Three pillars guided every decision:
With our UX pillars established, I mapped each major user journey—from login through planning and resolution—directly to these strategic objectives. This ensured that every flow, wireframe, and interaction reinforced the experience we wanted to deliver: speed under pressure, clarity in complexity, and confidence across roles. These journeys informed not just screen layouts, but system structure, interaction patterns, and onboarding flows.
Not a feature update—a full reboot of field UX.
Lynx Mobile had one job: make control intuitive, immediate, and reliable. We stripped the baggage of the browser‑based Lynx Cloud and rethought interaction from the technician’s hand upward.
— Superintendent, Texas
From liability to the most‑used tool in the system.
Lynx Mobile became the de‑facto tool for on‑course work. Crews could act in place, even with poor signal, and supervisors got cleaner, faster handoffs.
We instrumented Lynx Mobile with Mixpanel (events, funnels, cohorts) and Hotjar (heatmaps, session replays), and we run recurring user tests and in‑app micro‑surveys. We review dashboards weekly and run quarterly field/usability studies to ensure each release moves the right KPIs.
This instrumentation lets us make data‑driven decisions, validate design hypotheses, and track how new work improves customer outcomes—so we know which features to invest in next and where to double‑down on support.
The mobile design language born here has since shaped two other flagship products and is now the standard for all field-first tools. This wasn’t a release—it was a recalibration of what our users should expect from us.
Lynx Cloud was the past. Lynx Mobile is the blueprint.
