Community product · Mobile app

Creative Call: a reason to open the Polaroid app again

Polaroid had a loyal following but a barely-used app. I designed Creative Call — a photo challenge that gave people a reason to keep opening it. I did the research and the design. It's still in the app today.

Role

UX designer & researcher

Team

1 PM, small dev team, design lead + 1 designer

Timeline

~1 month

Platform

Polaroid app, iOS & Android

See it live

App Store · Google Play

9:41

Polaroid

Creative Call · This month

Portraits

Tips · 2 min

Closes in

12 days

Entries

438

How to nail it: get close, find soft window light, and let your subject look just off-camera.

Submit your Polaroid

Creative Call — submission complete screen

02

Business context & goals

Polaroid's business runs on film, not hardware.

More shooting means more revenue. The problem: people only really shot around the holidays, and the community that could inspire year-round shooting had grown up outside the app. The app was a camera utility — not a destination.

The goal

Get users to the app early, and get them creating. The app had a million installs, but almost nobody made anything in it. The goal: turn passive installs into active creators — every photo submitted is film sold.

By the numbers

1M+

Installs

Large, loyal base.

~44k

Daily actives

4.4% of installs — well below benchmark.

~120k

Downloads / mo

Holiday-spiked, then quiet.

4.4★

App store rating

Liked, but not returned to.

03

Problem

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

For new users

Many Polaroid customers are new — they got the camera as a gift. It looks easy, but shooting well isn't, and at film prices bad shots sting. Most get discouraged and stop before finding their footing.

This is a journey problem — it comes down to two questions:

01

Get them in

How do we get users into the app as soon as possible after unboxing?

02

Keep them shooting

And once they're there, how do we educate them, and keep them motivated to keep shooting?

04

Role

Brought in to move fast and experiment.

I joined Polaroid as a freelancer, brought in to move fast and experiment. I owned the design end to end — built on existing research and complemented it with my own.

The brief

Done over perfect.

Low budget, simple layouts that could be reused across future experiments, no unnecessary complexity. That constraint shaped every decision.

05

Research insights

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:

User interviews Usage data Polaroid subreddits Polaroid staff

01

Education

Tips, techniques, and tricks to help new users improve faster and waste less film.

02

Community

Seeing what others shoot — for inspiration, validation, and a sense of belonging.

03

Structure

A prompt or theme that gives people a reason to pick up the camera today.

06

Approach · Insight

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.

In their words · user interviews

“Even though the camera feels very playful I'd like some more professional advice and inspiration — maybe pro photographers showing what comes out well on a Polaroid.”

NNalini, 24User interview

“There's some really great info on how to shoot a Polaroid out there. I'm very invested in the community forums now, but not really in the app.”

GGuvin, 27User interview

“I'll shoot a whole pack on a trip, then the camera just sits on the shelf for months. I need a nudge to actually pick it up.”

PPriya, 29User interview

“Half my early shots came out too dark and I had no idea why. A few pointers in the app would've saved me so much film.”

TTomas, 33User interview

07

Direction

Creative Call — a recurring photo challenge with education.

A monthly photo challenge in the app. Polaroid sets the theme with a short tips video; users shoot, scan and submit; winners are featured in the app and on Polaroid's channels.

The trade-off

The broader goal was a full education initiative — including an AI feature to diagnose shots — but it wasn't buildable yet. Rather than wait, we shipped what we could control: a reason to come back.

Stage — Portraits theme, tips and examples

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

08

Approach · Design

Four principles kept it approachable.

Design principles

Make it beginner friendly. The first theme was Portraits — a low-threshold entry point, and the foundation of photography.
Pair each challenge with education. We filmed the first beginner guide in Polaroid's office in one day — the PM on camera, Polaroid's photographer behind it.
Choose examples deliberately. Two approachable example photos, one professional — something to aspire to without raising the bar.
Keep it simple and fast. Native components and reusable layouts — built to ship quickly and carry into future experiments.

Beginner's Lesson — Portraits, with tips video — The beginner guide, paired with the challenge

Filming the beginner guide — make sure the sun is behind you — Filmed in Polaroid's office in a single day

09

Solution

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.

Learn more about portrait photography — tips video — Learn

Upload your submission — add photo — Upload

Wow, that's a nice shot — submission confirmed — Confirmed

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

10

Education

Then we answered the mistakes people actually made.

Beyond the contest, we shipped education pieces answering the most common beginner mistakes: photos too dark, too bright and blurry, or coming out green.

Beginner tips video — today I'm going to be teaching you — Tips video

Lighten up your photos — why is my background always so dark — Too dark

Selfie stability — why are my pictures so bright and blurry — Bright & blurry

Carnaval of chemistry curiosity — why do my pictures come out green — Green hue

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

11

Impact

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

018× growth in submissions
First challenge: 100 entries. Over the first year's 12 challenges, averaged 800 a month, peaking at 1,500. No paid promotion, no prize increase — just the mechanic compounding month over month.
023,500 unique participants
Across 12 challenges, 3,500 distinct users — roughly 8% of the daily-active base — submitted ~9,600 entries in total, nearly 3 challenges per participant on average. New people kept joining, and the ones who joined came back.
03~1.8% average monthly creation rate
Averaged ~1.8% of the ~44k daily-active base creating monthly — early months lower, later months near 3%. Most people in any app never make anything, so getting close to that is a lot.
04Still here, years later
It outlasted my time at Polaroid and is still running. Store data lists Creative Calls among the main reasons power users open the app.

12

Reflection & next steps

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

When research shows you everything that's broken, the temptation is to fix all of it. That made the work messier than it needed to be. One thing at a time, same result.

How it played out

The bigger picture played out. The AI education feature eventually shipped, after my time at Polaroid. Creative Call held the ground in the meantime — kept the community warm, gave people a reason to show up. That's about as good an outcome as a fast, deliberately scoped feature can have.