System Design: Index

From Wiki
System Design
Page metadata
First created Jun 20, 2026
Last edited Jun 21, 2026

System Design

Given a product specification, system design is about designing:

  1. a foundational data representation of the product’s users and objects, and how they interact
  2. a system of components (databases, services, others…), under constraints, to optimize for the product’s needed requirements.

Optimizing… for what exactly?

What the system must do

  • What are the core actions and features?
  • Who are the users? what actions / features do they have access to?
  • What are the key objects?

How well it must do it

  • Scale: how many users or requests or volume of data
  • Availability: how okay is downtime? (a bank ain’t a blog)
  • Latency: how fast must a response feel?
  • Consistency: does anyone need the exact data instantly? or is a slight lag fine?
  • Durability: can we ever lose data?
  • Privacy: how secure must user data be?

Index