You know all those great ideas you say you'll do some day but never end up doing? Water Pixies is one of those ideas that actually became a reality! I am saying this because the gap between what you think should work and what actually works is enormous!
We have been designing the brand, the products and the workflow for a few months now, and it was always obvious that the high volume photography would be the most challenging. It would test our ability to deliver a quality product and service in challenging conditions.
Our Swim School Photo Hoop which integrates the photo session to the regular swim class, brought about a few challenges regarding consent, share of private information and workflow. Where there is volume, every little detail compounds into a huge time consuming problem, customer dissatisfaction.
Now that we have passed our first real test successfully I am allowed and proud to say that our design is pretty adequate and efficient; we changed a couple things in our inaugural week but overall the theory played out well in practice.
- Photographically, the ratio of successful images to time taken in the water is incredibly high. We are very happy with the photographic result, even though the environment was challenging for the camera. We are also incredibly satisfied with the our little models, whom on average, always manage to give us a good pose or face in at least one of the three photographs - even those who are only a few months old! Often, all three photographs are great!
- We solved a lot of the signing up workflow challenges by asking parents to sign up as they walk in.
- We solved reconciliation of photos, names and email addresses while keeping privacy at the centre of our process.
- The swim instructors, whom the kids already know, direct the kid, as they would during their regular lessons.
- We have had 80-85% rates of email opens, showing that parents are excited about their photos and showing that most emails reach their destination with the adequate amount of information.
- We have found that being present the week after photo week was good for parents to ask further questions about the process, however they clearly liked the possibility of ordering online while their brains is not taken over by children yelling asking all sorts of things.
- Occasionally a child has not wanted to take photos and we did not. On average, it does not appear to be that the presence of a camera or a photographer has affected the pool regular activities anymore than other minimal changes occuring any other week (change of instructor, side of pool, level up, etc.).
We are super happy with the result, and we hope parents are too!
Bring on Jump! Jandakot, parents there have already responded pretty well online to our coming.
We are excited!