Pause before choosing technology and agree on the job the system must do.
01
SYSTEM VIEW
The decision path
Explore the flow
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Ask who the system serves and what success means, then state a practical boundary before designing components.
↗ Follow how each decision narrows and strengthens the design.
THE IDEA
How it works
A request such as “build a news feed” can describe many products. Ask who uses it, which actions matter most, and what the first version must support. A feed of recent friends’ posts has a different shape from one that ranks videos from strangers.
Name the core use cases, identify what can wait, and confirm that boundary with the people making the request. The purpose is to design the right system for a stated problem, not to include every technology you know.
✳ DECISION POINT
A teammate says, “We need a social feed.” What would you ask before proposing storage or caching?
Your notes stay on this device.
Compare your reasoning
Ask who creates and reads posts, whether the feed contains friends’ posts or recommendations, how it is ordered, which media types it supports, and what must ship first.
Use this as a guide for self review; written answers are not graded.
Keep in mind
Clarify users, core actions, and first-release boundaries before drawing infrastructure.
Record scope as a decision to revisit when the problem changes.
CHECK YOUR UNDERSTANDING
Put it into practice.
1 OF 2
ApplyQUESTION 01
Someone asks you to design a “news feed.” What is the most useful first move?
Choose an answer to see the explanation.
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