During the 2020 covid pandemic, my company, a digital printers in London was closed on guidelines from the UK government and all staff were placed on a furloug scheme and told to stay at home.
So after 30+ years of being an average golfer I decided to lower my 16 handicap to single figures. 50 balls at the into a net every morning was helping with my ball striking and distance control but the main thing slowing me down was my constant 3 putting. I was lacking confidence on tricky putts to save par. I had to do something about it. So I set out on a personal mission to create an adjustable putting device for golfers of all abilities to get more confident and stop the dreaded 3 putt.
After a few months of 3d cad designing hundreds of 3d printed prototypes followed, some were not heavy enough, hinges felt weak, bodies broke & arms snapped, all of these were eventually solved but my main problem was still creating focus and concentration.
I needed a design that the user could step up too and feel confident.
Tons of research followed and whilst studying hole and circle dynamics I stumbled upon research in 1901 by the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
Ebbinghaus's work demonstrated how the brain perceives the size of an object relative to the size of the objects around it. He used small circles equally spaced around a larger center circle.
He Found this visually increased the larger center circle making it appear larger than what it physically was. This led him to publish ‘The Ebbinghaus Illusion’ .
But to house large outer dots the original body of the PuttX had to increase from 10mm deep to a chunkier 25mm which could could incorporate multiple 20mm black dots around its circumference.
A few months of designing and many more prototypes the final version was created.