Eight shapes a home can take
In the portal: Settings, then Surfaces.
What it is
Every page before this one describes a control. This page shows what the controls add up to.
The top of a home screen answers one question: what is this programme for? A home that opens on a list of things to tick is a different product from a home leading with the person's own blood pressure. Neither is a different build. They are the same app, the same five tabs and the same twelve surface settings, arranged differently.
Eight arrangements are worth knowing by name. Advice first, task list first, self-tracking first and clinical monitoring first are running in live customer apps today. Programme first, library first and coach first come from our own design work, and nobody has built one yet. Moment first is new.
What it looks like
When you would use one
Pick one before you configure anything, and use it as the thing you check new content against.
The usual failure is not choosing a bad architecture. It is choosing none, adding a surface every time somebody asks for one, and ending up with a home that leads with whatever was configured first. If you can say in one sentence what the top of your home is for, you have an architecture. If you cannot, you have a list.
A worked example. A tenancy runs a cardiac programme where a nurse watches for deterioration. That is clinical monitoring first: measures at the top, medication under them, and how to reach a clinician under that. The same tenancy also runs a general wellbeing programme for staff, where nobody is watching anything. That is advice first, and it wants none of the above. Two architectures, one platform, and the only thing that differs is which surfaces exist and what their settings say.
The eight
| Architecture | What leads | The programme is for |
|---|---|---|
| Advice first | A picture card with the advice on it and a Done button | Behaviour change through reading and acting |
| Task list first | A dense list of tick rows, grouped by time of day | Daily repetition across many small acts |
| Self-tracking first | The person's own measures, with values and when they were taken | Managing your own condition day to day |
| Clinical monitoring first | The measures a service is watching, then medication, then how to reach a clinician | A service watching for deterioration |
| Programme first | The course, with the next step the biggest thing on the screen | Completing a structured pathway |
| Library first | One hero, then a browsable grid | Dipping in when something is needed |
| Coach first | Items a named person set, each saying who set it | A relationship, with the app as the channel |
| Moment first | One invitation at the top, and almost nothing under it | Arriving with a feeling and wanting one thing |
What the figure will not show you
The home is not always the first screen. A tenancy that runs on conversation can
hide the Home tab and put Chat first in nav.tabs, and the app opens where the list
starts. That is a tab decision rather than a home one, so it lives in
Tabs.
Two of these are almost the same picture and are not the same product. Self-tracking first and clinical monitoring first both lead with measures. The difference is who the numbers are for. One shows a person their own week. The other shows a service whether to step in, and it carries escalation copy that the first one must not.
Nothing here is a template you install. There is no button that applies an architecture. Each one is a handful of surfaces with the settings the recipe names, made the ordinary way in Settings, then Surfaces. That is the point of showing them: they are all reachable from where you already are.