Three things every digital product needs
Almost every digital product, whatever it does, ends up needing three things underneath. Authentication: how users prove who they are. Data: what gets stored about them and their work. Architecture: how the whole thing is structured so it actually works and keeps working.
These don’t sound exciting. They’re also the foundations that quietly determine whether a product is stable, secure, and able to grow. Get them roughly right early on, and most of the rest becomes easier. Get them badly wrong, and you spend disproportionate effort patching basic problems later.
You don’t need to be an expert in any of them. You do need to understand what each one is for, so you can make sensible decisions about how it’s handled.
Authentication: knowing who’s who
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