Step 1: Understand the problem and establish the design scope
Play this lessonThis lesson comes with an interactive animation you can break and a chapter quiz.Jumping straight into a solution is a big red flag. Slow down. Think deeply and ask questions to clarify requirements and assumptions. If you're asked to make assumptions, write them down.
Good questions to ask:
- What specific features are we building?
- How many users does the product have?
- How fast does the company expect to scale up? What's the scale in 3 months, 6 months, a year?
- What's the company's technology stack? What existing services could we reuse?
Watch an example conversation for "Design a news feed system". Notice how every answer becomes a written requirement.
Key takeaways
- Never start designing before you understand the scope.
- Turn every answer into a written requirement.