The centerpiece of HQ is the Day. The goal here is to build a page that a user could use just like a daily journal, but in a digital form.
Sort of like this, but digital.
From Best Self Co
Physical journals are great, and many people use them (including me) for a variety of purposes. Some are like the above and have sections with prompts to guide the user and provide structure, while others are free form with either dots (my preference) or lines or even blank paper.
A typical dot grid journal
The Day Page
The goal with the Day page in HQ is to recreate the best parts of the physical journal, but in a digital form. It looks like this (below). The center column has prompts for what should go in your journal today, while the left sidebar has tabs to quickly jump around to other days. We'll cover the right column in a minute.
Day Page Sections
Each day has various sections that allow for text input or that connect to other activities done throughout HQ. By default (and for privacy and ease of viewing), each section is closed when you first load the page.
Free Form Text
Clicking on any one section will reveal its contents. In some cases, there is a space to write something, just like you would in a physical journal.
Linked Records
In other cases, the section links to records from other places in HQ. This is particularly useful if some of the things you would keep track of in a journal are calls you want to make or other outreach to people in your life. While you could just write down "- Call Dad" in your journal, doing it this way lacks useful context. When was the last time you talked to this person? What did you talk about? Has this task been completed yet, or not? etc.
A better design would be if your journal was 1) digital and 2) smart enough to reference your contact and pull in necessary information right where you need it.
Right Sidebar
For these linked records, clicking on them will pull up more details related to that record in the right sidebar, providing additional context.
This works for records of all types of data that HQ stores, including contacts, habits, meals, workouts, and more...
a really healthy snack there huh? :/
It even works for papers!
And, you can make them bigger too so it's almost like holding them in your hand.
The capability of scanning papers (taking a picture) is especially great because it allows you to get the best of all worlds. Use your physical journal for things where writing is preferred (there are many), and use a digital journal for things where referencing of data and the other benefits of digital is required (there are a lot of these too).
I personally draw a bunch of diagrams and wireframes of product and business ideas using my trusty dot grid journal. I've tried many digital products for this purpose over the years—mostly on the iPad—and none work nearly as well for me as old fashioned pen and paper. For these sorts of purposes, we don't need to reinvent the wheel.
But for other purposes like editing text you've written, a digital form factor is superior and certainly avoids the numerous scratch outs that I have with pen & paper.
Metrics
Lastly, as a person goes about their day, they're doing numerous things. Many self-help and personal development books such as Atomic Habits and others stress the importance of tracking the things you do. This is great for accountability and just for keeping track of what's been done and what hasn't. HQ tracks these activities automatically as you interact with it.
Currently, it tracks:
Communications
Contacts
Papers
Jobs
Workouts
Meals
This list is growing, as is the depth of tracking that each thing can perform.
Mobile
Most of this is available on mobile as well. Soon all of it will be.
Summary
The design objective the Day page is to have a single representation of all of a person's daily activities:
It needs to be powerful, but not visually overwhelming
It needs to be scannable so a person can use it to quickly find what they're looking for
It needs to provide more info about a thing when the user wants to drill down further
It needs to combine the best elements of a physical journal and digital one all into one
Hopefully, HQ is off to a good start hitting those objectives.
