If a physical or regulated object can already hold the truth, the software around it gets to be simple.
Most products I have inherited started life as a complaint app. A form on a phone that asks the user to tell the system what is happening, a queue that routes the complaint to a worker, a dashboard that shows the queue. The whole stack exists because the truth lives in a person’s head, and the system has to interview the person to find out. Every screen is a translator. Every workflow is a paraphrase. The product is a long way from the world it is reporting on.
The trick I have used since 2019 is to look for a thing in the world that already wants to be the source of truth, and design the product around it instead of above it.
At Antariksh the bin was the object. A load gauge on the bottom, a buzzer on the side, a QR-coded ID anyone could scan. Once the bin could declare its own state, the citizen no longer had to fill a form, the worker no longer had to be told where to go, and the admin saw a city in motion instead of a city in complaint. The four apps became supporting actors to one bin.
At Locus the shipment order was the object. Every dispatcher, every driver, every CS operator, every analytics surface read its state from the order. The product never had to ask a human what was happening. It read the order.
At FOLO the Account Aggregator consent is the object. A user gives explicit, time-bound, revocable consent through a regulated framework. Once that consent exists, the rest of the product follows. Net worth is computed, not declared.
The pattern is the same in all three. Find the thing in the world that already wants to be the source of truth. Let it speak. Build the software as a window onto it, not as a translator above it.
When you cannot find that object, you end up writing forms that ask the user to tell you what is already true somewhere else. The discipline is to keep looking until the object surfaces. Then design around it, not over it.