The concept takes inspiration from Google Seed Studio and Map Project Office's Little Signals project. Little Signals is an experimental endeavor that explores new ideas for interaction design based on the principles of Calm Technology. These principles include minimizing the attention required by technology, creating a sense of calm, utilizing peripheral awareness, amplifying the best qualities of both technology and humanity, enabling non-verbal communication, ensuring technology's functionality even in case of failure, employing the minimum necessary technology to solve a problem, and respecting social norms.

The concept behind the project is to address the growing disconnection between urban dwellers and the natural day-night cycle. As people spend more time indoors, particularly in offices or homes with artificial lighting, they become detached from the natural rhythms governed by the rising and setting of the sun. In a natural setting, humans typically wake up when the sun rises and sleep when it sets. The Hourday concept aims to bridge this gap and reconnect individuals with nature. It accomplishes this by visually representing the sun's position in the sky along with the corresponding time of day, serving as a reminder of the current stage of the day.

The technology involved utilizes a microcontroller connected to Wi-Fi, which accesses the IP address to retrieve geographical information such as sunset and sunrise times. These data are then used to calculate the sun's position on an arch representing daylight and its speed across the sky. The speed is determined by factors such as geographical location and time of year, indicating how long it takes for the sun to move from sunrise to sunset.

A proof of concept was developed for the prototype using Processing, a Java framework focused on visual design. The script relies on APIs to obtain the IP address, geolocation, and sunrise/sunset times. With these inputs, the system calculates the position and speed of the sun. During nighttime, the system updates the sunset and sunrise times accordingly. Visually, the sun is represented as a white solid circle against a black background, and the daytime is depicted by the position of the white circle along a semi-circle that spans the screen. The absence of the white circle indicates nighttime.