Design a team chat app like Slack: channels and DMs in real time, threads, unread counts and search. One-hour boards for junior, senior and staff, with the theory behind them.
Backend and product engineers designing software behavior.
Your approach: Use diagrams, tables or prose for customer contracts, state transitions and data ownership; include APIs only to the depth the question requests.
Design a Team Chat App like Slack. Design a team chat app like Slack: channels and DMs in real time, threads, unread counts and search. One-hour boards for junior, senior and staff, with the theory behind them. Work from the scoping questions below. State assumptions for any unspecified load, guarantee or target, then trace your design end to end. Explain one difficult case and a credible alternative; the worked example is a reference, not a required implementation.
Resolve the scoping questions for a Team Chat App like Slack. Separate stated behavior from assumptions, and identify what is outside your design.
Declare relevant volume, latency, freshness, quality or cost targets with units. Show calculations or an evaluation plan that can test them; unspecified targets are your assumptions, not hidden pass criteria.
Explain how your guarantees hold in a difficult case relevant to this subject. Address: Presence and typing? Push?
Identify users, required behavior and exclusions. Answer: Scale? Delivery target?
Define the information owned by the system and the inputs, outputs and errors at its boundaries. Resolve: Indicators? Search scope?
Estimate the dominant workload and resource demand with units and explicit assumptions. For a learned system, also state how quality is measured and what data is available.
Draw or describe the responsibilities needed for a Team Chat App like Slack. Trace a representative request, event or job from its input to a visible result; identify durable state owners.
Walk through a difficult case step by step, including detection and recovery. Consider: Ordering? Presence and typing? Push?
Compare a credible alternative using your chosen workload and guarantees. Explain a remaining risk, a signal to watch and when you would change the design.