Creative Call: a reason to open the Polaroid app again

Polaroid's business runs on film, not hardware.

A loved brand, a quiet app, and a hobby that's hard to start.

Brought in to move fast and experiment.

Three things get people shooting — and keep them.

I built on existing research and complemented it with my own. It pointed to three things that get people shooting more and sticking around:

What was missing wasn't features — it was a reason to shoot.

Across interviews the same thing surfaced — people wanted a reason, and a little guidance, to keep shooting. The app gave them neither.

Creative Call — a recurring photo challenge with education.

A recurring photo challenge inside the app. Polaroid sets a theme, users shoot and submit, entries are featured in the gallery, winners celebrated in the app and across Polaroid's channels — low friction, repeatable every month.

The trade-off

The broader goal was a full education initiative, including an AI feature to analyse shots and diagnose mistakes. That wasn't buildable yet — cost, dependencies, team constraints. Rather than wait, we focused on what we could control: making the app feel alive and giving people a reason to come back.

Stage — the monthly theme, tips video, and entry CTA.

Four principles kept it approachable.

Design principles

• Make it beginner friendly. The first theme was Portraits — taking a picture of someone else is a low-threshold entry point and the foundation of getting started with photography. No new film required to join.
• Pair each challenge with education. Tips and tricks were key to making it approachable. Rather than wait for education to be deprioritised, I made it happen with what we had — we filmed the first beginner guide in Polaroid's office in a single day, the PM on camera, Polaroid's photographer behind it.
• Choose examples deliberately. The first two example photos were intentionally approachable — nothing intimidating. The third was more professional, giving people something to aspire to without raising the bar too high at the start.
• Keep it simple and fast. Low budget, short runway — so I built on as many native components as possible. Simple, reusable layouts that shipped quickly and could be carried into future experiments without re-designing from scratch.

The shipped product.

Users submit a Polaroid photo by scanning their print with the app or photographing it and uploading directly. One submission per challenge keeps it fair, and all entries are publicly featured in the gallery.

Winners are a curated pick, judged on theme interpretation, creativity, and technique — featured in an in-app winners gallery and across Polaroid's channels, with early winners also receiving a triple-pack of film.

The core flow — from the monthly theme through upload, submission, and sharing.

Then we answered the mistakes people actually made.

Beyond the contest, we shipped a growing library of education pieces — built by identifying the most common beginner mistakes and answering them head-on. A tips video to get started, plus diagnostic articles for the problems people hit most: photos too dark, too bright and blurry, or coming out with a green hue.

Each piece takes a real question from the community and answers it with examples — turning common frustration into fewer wasted shots.

Participation that held — and a habit that outlasted the prize.

The app-wide numbers aren't mine to claim. What I know is that the feature shipped, it's still running, and people still show up every month without a prize to win.

The number that matters most isn't the peak — it's the slope. 100 submissions became 800 over a year, with no meaningful change to the mechanic. Repetition alone grew it.

If I did it again, I'd hold my nerve on scope.