System Design

What is System Design?

System design refers to the process of defining the architecture, components, modules, interfaces, and data flow of a software system.

A well-designed system should be able to:

• Handle increasing traffic
• Provide high availability
• Scale efficiently
• Recover from failures
• Maintain low latency
• Ensure data consistency and security

Product Design vs System Design Interviews

Product Design Interview

Focuses more on:

• User-facing applications
• APIs
• Data models
• Feature workflows
• End-user behavior

Examples:

• Design Uber
• Design Instagram Live Comments
• Design Ticketmaster

These are product-centric systems where user experience matters.

System Design Interview

Focuses more on:

• Infrastructure systems
• Distributed systems
• Scalability
• Reliability
• Backend architecture

Examples:

• Design a rate limiter
• Design memcache
• Design a distributed queue