One system for a life that used to live in six apps.
Role
Product & UX Designer
Type
Responsive Web App
Year
2026
Tools
Figma · Cormorant
A personal operating system holding notes, career, money and creative work in one calm place.
I designed North to replace six apps I used to keep separate, notes, tasks, career planning, finances, hobbies and a creative studio, with one system built around a daily check-in and seven distinct rooms.
Scattered tools make a scattered sense of self.
Notes apps, planners, budgeting tools and journals each hold a slice of a life, but none of them show the whole picture, or make it easy to check in on it daily.
The Challenge
- –Six separate apps for one life, none of them talking to each other
- –No daily habit tying career, money and wellbeing together
- –Folders and tags that ask for upkeep instead of offering clarity
- –Progress that disappears the moment a tab is closed
Five stages, one decision that shaped everything: rooms.
Discover
Mapped my own scattered setup, six apps for notes, tasks, money, career, hobbies, and none of them talking to each other.
Define
One system, organised into rooms. Each area of life gets its own space and its own rules, built from a shared kit.
Ideate
Tested a folder-and-tag structure first. Dropped it. Retrieval by recency and pinning matched how people actually think back on a day.
Prototype
Built the full shell in Figma: sign-up, home, a daily check-in, and seven rooms, notes, lists, career, learning, finances, work, hobbies.
Validate
Walked the corridor in order to confirm the arrangement itself made the case: each room recognisable in under two seconds.
Building every room from the same kit, so career, finances and hobbies each feel distinct without the interface starting over each time.
End-to-end design, from sign-up to the studio.
01. Home
One evening greeting, two things that moved forward today, three cards worth acting on. Nothing else competes for attention.
02. Sign Up
Three fields, each one explained. A system holding finances and a private journal has to earn trust before it earns data.
03. Daily Check-In
The single habit the whole system is built around. Everything else is easier to keep up once this one sticks.
04. Notes
Shaped like a journal page: a date, a note, an optional pin. No folders, no tags, nothing to file.
05. Career
A path diagram instead of a résumé, milestones behind, opportunities ahead, gaps drawn honestly as gaps.
06. Studio
The one room with no status field. Moodboards, sketches and dead ends live together, on purpose.
07. Settings
Plain-language controls for a system that touches money, career and private writing, nothing buried.
Colour Palette
#001524
Midnight
#15616D
Deep Teal
#FF7D00
Signal Orange
#FFECD1
Warm Paper
Typography
Cormorant
A serif display paired with Work Sans, giving the system an editorial, unhurried voice.
Key Components
Daily check-in card
Room navigation rail
Journal-style note entry
Career path diagram
Studio slide viewer
Ledger-style finance summary
North shows how I approach information architecture at scale, seven distinct life areas, one shared visual kit, and a daily habit tying it all together.
Next: syncing the Studio room with real file storage, and a lighter mobile shell for the daily check-in specifically, the one screen worth opening in under five seconds.