Ever since I discovered Notion, I've happily iterated on many many many homepage designs. And it took a lot of iterations before I finally settled on a specific design.
As I was exploring countless homepage versions, I've come to realize that my keys to a successful homepage would be the following:
Important sections need to be easily accessible
The general visual design should be clean and, at the same, engaging
Navigation should be simple and streamlined so that familiarity and habit formation is faster
And it turns out that the answer to all of my three criteria above is one very simple shift in approach. And that is to use Database Gallery Views as homepage directories instead of the regular page links that is Notion's default route.
Gallery Views vs. Page Links
The main reason why page links were ineffective for me is because they tend to be very small relative to the screen size and I found it difficult to navigate to the specific sections or pages that I want. This is especially true when using the desktop or web version of Notion. Gallery Views with functional cover images provide for a larger clickable area making it very easy to navigate to a desired page.
Also, in my experience, a homepage with a lot of page links - however organized - were not very exciting to engage with . I have found, on the other hand, that cover photos carefully curated to represent a subject of the page to be a more engaging visual cue than a page title in text form. Put simply, Gallery Views was my way of making Notion "more attractive" in Atomic Habits speak.
Finally, to complete my design language, I committed to using Gallery Views for all my homepage sections. This is to streamline the homepage experience so that there will be no jagged views, resulting to a smooth and consistent experience all throughout.
My Homepage Sections
My homepage, like many others, are also organized into key sections. This took a lot of testing and reflection on my part where I eventually settled on the following 5 groups:
Dailies (which includes Habits, Tasks and Logs)
Active Projects
Learning
Active References
Your Wiki
Thank you so much for being here! I hope you found value in this post.
Take care and I wish you happy Notion-filled days ahead!
Love,
Zarelle