Chatting with Jeremy Le Van: Co-founder of Sunrise
We are Central, a design studio that helps organizations create websites and apps. Every month or so, we organize an Umami Talk: an event during which we interview a digital product professional in front of a friendly audience. This article is a shortened and slightly edited version of the chat we had with Jeremy Le Van.
Jeremy is Design Director at Outlook Mobile. Before working for this tech giant, he co-founded Sunrise with Pierre Valade. After 2 years, they sold their popular calendar app to Microsoft for $100 million.
Thank you so much for being here Jeremy. Can you tell us how you got to where you are now?
I’m originally from Brussels, Belgium. I got into design pretty late. I was never really good at drawing compared to other designers. I fell into design in a way. I started studying graphic design when I learned that a friend of mine started advertising at Saint-Luc in Brussels. I didn’t know it was a thing. So I started studying graphic design here in Brussels at the College of Art and Design (CAD), which is a private school. Then, after my first internship at a small ad agency, I decided to keep on learning. I wanted to learn more about the web. I decided to go for another degree in San Francisco. At first, I was supposed to study motion design. This was in 2005; there was no real mobile design yet. When I applied to the school, which thankfully wasn’t too expensive, they told me that the program was no longer offered because there weren’t enough people interested in it. They told me I had to pick something else but I had no clue what to pick. They said: ‘There’s something called Interactive Media Design. It’s kind of related… There’s some Flash.’ I thought: ‘Ok, why not.’
So in 2007, I landed in San Francisco and didn’t know anyone. There were almost no Belgians compared to today. Now we’re well-represented. I slowly started meeting people at design and development meet-ups. After a while, I decided to join a start-up in San Francisco which at the time was called Seesmic. It was an aggregator of Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn timelines and it eventually got acquired by Hootsuite. From one experience to another I decided to move to New York. I had heard there were a lot of great things happening there design-wise and start-up-wise. Tumblr started in New York, Foursquare and other companies were there. I wanted to check it out. I landed a job at Foursquare and that’s where I met Pierre, my co-founder. We started Sunrise a year and a half after joining Foursquare; so, rather quickly. But we felt ready to start something on our own.
When you started Sunrise, you wanted the workflow to be just right. Can you tell us about the methods you decided to implement?
We actually started Sunrise because of the workflow. Obviously, we also started it because we wanted to create a product but even more so because we were frustrated with working at Foursquare. So we looked at our past experience, for me in San Francisco and for Pierre in France and New York. His background is in engineering so we’re very complementary. We looked at how people worked remotely, how people worked in teams, how we could optimize design time and engineering time. We wanted to apply our own methodology to a product.
Then we found the specific idea by looking at our phones. It was back when Spotify was replacing iTunes and all these third-party apps were replacing the apps installed by default on phones. We looked at the calendar and thought: ‘This is a piece of shit. Let’s fix it.’ It wasn’t working well. The syncing was bad. No one was really paying attention to it. Besides Google Calendar, there was no real innovation. We didn’t know if this was going to be successful or not. But that’s why we were doing it. And we just fell in love with the idea.
Your team was split between Paris, New York and San Francisco. How did you make that remote collaboration work?
At the time we didn’t have all of the tools that are available today. It’s not that long ago but I feel like today I see tools that tell you your colleagues’ time zones, and this and that. I feel like everything is even more optimized for working remotely. But for us, what worked really well was the fact that there was a lot of trust in the team. We tried to hire people who were really autonomous. For instance, when we hired Arnaud, our first employee in Paris, he worked by himself. The good thing was that sometimes he would work pretty late so we could catch up with him at night, which was very useful. But we tried to set up a system that was asynchronous, meaning that Arnaud wouldn’t be blocked if we were asleep or gone and vice versa. We were always trying to get the ball rolling. One way of doing that was through GitHub issues.
We could’ve used something else but we used GitHub issues because it allowed us to track issues, save code and store to-dos about anything from sprints and releases to lunch and printing t-shirts. For people who don’t know how GitHub works, it has different repositories (repos) which are essentially different projects. So you could have a project called ‘Team’ which is everything related to team communication, etc. And another repo about food or lunch. It’s kind of like a channel on Slack. So we “hacked” GitHub issues for our own needs. We wanted to have one single tool. When you have a start-up, there’s the danger of having too many tools because you want to optimize and be the best. Eventually, you get lost and use a lot of different solutions instead of using one tool really well.
I did a presentation about that in New York a few years ago and we had a few start-ups reach out to us and say: ‘This is amazing! We’re using GitHub issues for everything now and it works for us.’ We’re glad that people were able to use it the same way we did. We didn’t find a perfect solution but we felt like it was the closest one to filling our needs. Actually, one of my ex-colleagues is now working on a better version of GitHub issues with time-zone support for remote working, etc.
What were your days like at Sunrise?
Since my background is product design, I focused on UX/UI, user stories, leading design research, etc. We hired a friend, who now works at Facebook, as a design researcher. She was more of a psychologist. She would go talk to people, do surveys, do NPS (Net Promoter Score: you ask people to rank your product to give you an idea of whether they like it or not). So I was overseeing that with her. I was also working with the product designers on features and improving the product. Since Pierre has a background in engineering, he was more involved in that. If there were any high-level tech decisions to be made, I wouldn’t touch them. Pierre and the rest of the engineering team would make those decisions. I was more on the product/design side of things. I spent a lot of time brainstorming, drafting user experiences in Sketch and doing other kinds of hands-on work.
If you could re-do Sunrise’s handoff to Microsoft, would you change anything? If so, what?
I’m going to be candid and honest. Some things were amazing. First of all, everyone was really nice. There was so much happiness. People were genuinely willing to help. But there are things I would potentially change. On-boarding a small entity (we were 15) into a bigger ecosystem is very complicated. For instance, at Sunrise, Pierre and I did a lot of different things. I took care of some accounting, finance and marketing, finding a new office space, finding contractors; a lot of things that weren’t necessarily related to design per se. All of a sudden you get told: ‘Oh actually, you’ll just be working on this, this and that. That’s it.’ And you’re thinking: ‘Well, I used to do this and that too.’ It can be frustrating at times. But there are a lot of services you get access to all of sudden and that’s amazing.
So I would say that if we had to re-do things, I would have spent more time learning how Microsoft operates and about the people. Suddenly, you’re told: ‘This manager does this, and that one is leading that’. And then they have acronyms… You can get lost in the midst of all that. Another thing is that in a start-up, you’re used to working very fast. In bigger corporations, things take time, there are legal agreements that need to be reviewed before shipping code, etc.
Basically, it would’ve been good to better understand the entity itself. And I think it has to come from the acquirer and from the start-up too. The relationship goes both ways.
Other than that, it went well. Now our team is fully integrated in Microsoft. Some people got promoted. There’s definitely a learning process and I think that as long as people keep learning, it’s good, it’s healthy. There are opportunities in bigger companies. It’s just not always easy for everyone to find their place. And then there are people who just don’t fit in large organizations while others do. It’s very personal.
Now you’re Design Director at Outlook Mobile. What design challenges is your team facing?
A major one is to make sure that we communicate with the other teams within Microsoft, and first and foremost within Outlook. Outlook Mobile is essentially a proof of concept. If something works really well on mobile, they can say: ‘Look, this works well on mobile. Now we can do the same with all the other products.’ We’re kind of like a showcase within Microsoft even for other teams like Skype, etc. It’s great that we get to be a positive example within the company. Sometimes people give us hard looks because we’re changing things. It’s part of the process. But it’s all for the better in a way.
What are some useful processes you use to keep your team efficient?
We’re trying to keep our milestones small and to ship on a weekly basis. It’s better to ship something, even if it’s small, than not to ship anything at all. Instead of going directly at a big project or feature, we slice it into smaller, more manageable chunks and focus on one at a time. It’s ok if you don’t finish it, you can always push it back to next week but at least there’s some type of goal and everyone is trying to work towards it. We’re trying to keep the momentum going. That’s something we had at Sunrise and that we kept at Microsoft. Before, they used to ship on a 6-month basis.
We also try not to have too many catch-up meetings. We try to meet at the beginning of the week and announce what we’re going to be working on. Unless there’s a blocker, we don’t feel the need to catch up again. I know there are the Agile/Scrum huddles but we feel that we’re already busy enough. Let’s design, code and write. There’s a lot to do, so let’s focus on that and collaborate without having too many meetings in the process. Sometimes we do have to meet, obviously. We’re just trying to make sure we don’t end up in a meeting with 2 people talking while the others are just on their phones or trying to work. But it’s really hard for big companies to fundamentally change. I think it’s great that the CEO and management at Microsoft are really trying to embrace more start-ups.
How do you take care of design quality checks?
The designer of the feature is responsible for quality assurance (QA). I think it’s kind of like support. Support is not always fun but you should be grateful for hearing from your customers who took a minute or 20 minutes out of their day to tell you that your product sucks. Even if they’re mad, they’re still taking the time to write. They’re not just uninstalling the app. Sometimes we had people get back to us weeks or months later saying ‘Oh you fixed it. Now it’s great!’ Sometimes they end up loving you.
I think that within a product team, everyone should be confronted with support and QA. It’s not just one person’s role. In start-ups, many people view support and QA like doing the dishes. They say: ‘Oh no, I have to do support/QA…’ No, it’s making your product awesome and better. So let’s all collaborate and let’s try to be positive about it. I think it’s just about changing the mentality. I know there’s more than one way of doing things but the solution we tried was the best I’ve experienced. I’ve read about other teams doing it differently and it worked for them. So I think it depends on the dynamics of the team and the people within it.
What is, in your opinion, the best way to handle handoffs between designers and developers?
We’ve been using Zeplin, a tool that allows you to upload your Sketch file and allows the engineer on the other side to make sure he doesn’t mess with it. It’s been working great for us. On the other hand I feel you get the best quality of work when a designer and an engineer are sitting next to each other and getting things done. I know the engineer doesn’t always want to do it. But then sometimes engineers want things that designers don’t want to do. So I think it’s about building great relationships between engineers and designers.
We shouldn’t just assume that engineers don’t want to be involved in design and vice versa. We had 2 engineers who became full-time UX designers and they’re great at it. One of them actually became a lead designer. He knows how to code and went through the pain points of learning how to design and he’s a great asset to the team. I wish we had more people really trying to embrace the other side. If it’s possible, I think it’s really great to have that communication going.
Microsoft wants to create applications that can be used on different devices. As designers how do you tackle the process of designing for devices with different constraints?
First of all, it’s very new for a company like Microsoft to design for something else than just its own devices. Microsoft embraced the App Store and the Play Store. We’re glad to be a part of that change, it’s very big. They understood that business and users are everywhere, not just in one place. It’s pretty remarkable for a company of that scale.
To answer your question, we’re always trying to take a holistic approach to the platform we’re designing for. Google has guidelines, Apple has guidelines, the web has guidelines (though they’re more open). Something we talk a lot about at Microsoft is the balance between brand and platform. How do you design something that feels like an iPhone app? I would say that the Skype app on the iPhone is one of the best examples. At one point it looked like a Windows phone app on the iPhone. Microsoft learned from that. We’re glad they did because now when we have that conversation they say: ‘Yeah, of course, that’s how Apple does it so we need the tab bar at the bottom.’
We’re always trying to find the right balance between the feel of the device and an impression of cohesion between the platforms. It’s also something we tried to do at Sunrise on a smaller scale. We thought about the experience of a user who uses a mac and then goes to an iPad and then to an Android. How does the experience feel across the different devices?
I would also say tone is very important. Alice, who worked with us on marketing, started working on the app descriptions and we actually got a lot of 5 stars because people loved the app descriptions. When you update an app it usually says ‘fixing bugs’ and things like that. Alice added some jokes and people loved it. I think it’s about finding the little things that make people stick.
Where do you find your drive?
I would say it’s mostly something I learned back in graphic design school: trying to be a sponge, trying to absorb as much as I can. I think that’s why after living in San Francisco for a while, I wanted to explore someplace else. It doesn’t necessarily have to mean moving from Brussels to Paris or New York. I think it’s just the fact of being exposed to other things. You can talk to lawyers or people in finance and you’ll learn something new. For me, it’s mostly about learning as much as possible. I think that’s why I love New York so much because it has a variety of individuals: people in design, fashion, advertising, law, finance. But you also have that in Paris, Berlin, London and even in Brussels.
For me it’s also been about trying to think about new ideas and new concepts. Wanting to figure out why something is so broken. Essentially looking at sometimes mundane things that I use every day and trying to think about them in a different way. There will always be haters saying things like: ‘Oh, why are you creating a new calendar?’ Well, guess what? I think the current one is a piece of crap so I’m going to try to fix it.
An enormous thank you goes to Jeremy for speaking at our Umami Talk despite being jet-lagged. We also tip our hats to Nádia for the gorgeous portrait she made for our invitation, and we thank everyone who helped us make this a wonderful event. For those who got stuck on the waiting list, we’re sorry you didn’t get to join and we hope to see you soon!
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