Design Exercises
Choose an exercise to practice. Each exercise breaks down a system design problem into guided steps.
System Design
Design scalable distributed systems and architectures
Design a URL Shortener
A URL shortening service similar to bit.ly that generates short aliases for long URLs and redirects users to the original destination.
Design a Distributed Cache
Build a distributed caching system similar to Redis or Memcached that provides high-speed key-value storage across multiple nodes.
Design a Rate Limiter
Implement a distributed rate limiting service that can be used across multiple services to prevent abuse and ensure fair resource usage.
Design a Notification System
Create a multi-channel notification system that can send messages via email, SMS, push notifications, and in-app alerts.
Design a File Storage Service
Build a cloud storage platform similar to Dropbox or Google Drive that allows users to upload, store, and share files.
Design a Chat Application
Build a real-time messaging platform similar to Slack or Discord that supports direct messages, group chats, and channels.
Design a Search Engine
Build a web-scale search engine that crawls, indexes, and retrieves relevant results for user queries.
Design a Video Streaming Platform
Create a video streaming service similar to YouTube or Netflix that allows users to upload, process, and stream video content.
Design a Payment System
Build a payment processing platform that handles transactions, manages wallets, and integrates with external payment providers.
Design a Ride-Sharing Service
Build a ride-sharing platform similar to Uber or Lyft that matches riders with nearby drivers in real-time.
Design a Social Media Feed
Build a news feed system similar to Twitter or Instagram that aggregates and ranks content from followed users.
Design a Booking System
Create a reservation platform similar to Airbnb or OpenTable that handles availability, bookings, and prevents double-booking.
Design a Metrics & Monitoring System
Build an observability platform similar to Datadog or Prometheus that collects, stores, and visualizes system metrics.
Design an E-commerce Platform
Build an online shopping platform similar to Amazon that handles product catalog, cart, checkout, and order fulfillment.
Design a Content Delivery Network
Build a globally distributed caching system that delivers static content with low latency from edge locations.
Database Design
Design schemas for relational and NoSQL databases
Design an E-commerce Database (Relational)
A relational database schema for an e-commerce platform that handles products, orders, customers, and inventory management.
Design a Social Network Database (Relational)
A relational database schema for a social networking platform with users, posts, friendships, and interactions.
Design a Content Management Database (MongoDB)
A MongoDB schema for a flexible content management system that handles various content types, media, and publishing workflows.
Design an IoT Time-Series Database (MongoDB)
A MongoDB schema optimized for storing and querying IoT sensor data with time-series patterns.
Design a Gaming Leaderboard (DynamoDB)
A DynamoDB schema for a real-time gaming leaderboard system that handles global and regional rankings.
Design a Multi-Tenant SaaS Database (DynamoDB)
A DynamoDB schema for a multi-tenant SaaS application with strong tenant isolation and varying usage patterns.
API Design
Design REST, GraphQL, and tRPC APIs with best practices
Design a REST API for E-commerce
A RESTful API for an e-commerce platform that handles products, orders, customers, and payments.
Design a REST API for Social Media
A RESTful API for a social media platform with posts, comments, likes, follows, and real-time notifications.
Design a GraphQL API for Content Platform
A GraphQL API for a content management platform with articles, authors, categories, and comments.
Design a GraphQL API for E-commerce
A GraphQL API for an e-commerce platform with products, orders, cart, and checkout functionality.
Design a tRPC API for SaaS Dashboard
A tRPC API for a SaaS analytics dashboard with real-time data, user management, and reporting.
Design a tRPC API for Collaborative App
A tRPC API for a real-time collaborative application like Notion or Figma with documents, comments, and presence.
AI System Design
Design AI/ML systems, RAG pipelines, and LLM-powered applications
Design a RAG-based Q&A System
A Retrieval-Augmented Generation system that answers questions about a company's internal knowledge base using LLMs.
Design an AI Code Assistant
An AI-powered code assistant like GitHub Copilot that provides intelligent code completions, explanations, and refactoring suggestions.
Design an AI Image Generation Platform
A platform like Midjourney or DALL-E that generates images from text prompts at scale.
Design an AI Agent Orchestration System
A system that orchestrates multiple AI agents to complete complex, multi-step tasks autonomously.
Design an AI-Powered Search Engine
A semantic search engine like Perplexity that understands natural language queries and synthesizes answers from multiple sources.
Design an AI Voice Assistant
A conversational AI voice assistant like Alexa or Google Assistant that understands speech, processes commands, and responds naturally.
Object-Oriented Design
Master OOD principles, design patterns, DDD, and hexagonal architecture
Design a Library Management System
The class hierarchy and object model for a library management system that handles books, members, loans, and reservations.
Design a Parking Lot System
Apply object-oriented design to model a multi-level parking lot with different vehicle types, payment strategies, and spot allocation.
Design an E-Commerce Order System with DDD
Apply Domain-Driven Design principles to model an e-commerce order system, defining bounded contexts, aggregates, entities, value objects, and domain events.
Design a Notification System with Hexagonal Architecture
Apply Hexagonal Architecture (Ports & Adapters) to design a multi-channel notification system that is fully decoupled from infrastructure.
Design a Chess Game Engine
Apply object-oriented design patterns to model a fully functional chess game engine, covering piece behaviour, move validation, game state, and extensibility.
Design a Plugin-Based Text Editor
Apply the Open/Closed Principle and plugin architecture patterns to design a text editor whose core is stable and all features are added via plugins.