Design a digital lost & found management platform
PremiumBackend systemEasy
- Search systems
- Blob storage
- Workflow management
Quick answer
This backend system interview question asks you to design a digital lost & found management platform. Aim for a design that meets its requirements at the stated scale, then explain its main components, data flow and trade-offs. Interviewers want to see how you scope the problem, size it and defend each choice.
The problem
Design a Digital Lost & Found Management Platform used by major transit hubs, airports, and universities. Facilities currently struggle with manual logs and disconnected spreadsheets, making it difficult for passengers to recover lost items.
The platform allows users (passengers/students) to submit "Lost" reports detailing what they lost, where, and when. Facility staff use a portal to log "Found" items with descriptions and photos. The system must continuously evaluate these two datasets to find potential matches (e.g., matching a user's "black MacBook" report with a staff's "dark grey Apple laptop" entry) and notify the user. Once a user attempts to claim an item, the system guides them through a strict verification and return workflow.
What must a digital lost & found management platform do?
- Item Registration: Users and staff can submit lost or found reports containing categories, descriptions, timestamps, locations, and photos.
- Auto-Matching: The system must identify potential matches between lost and found records based on metadata and text similarity.
What scale should you design for?
Use these numbers in your estimates.
The scale numbers unlock with this questionUnlock
Key concepts
- Search systems
- Blob storage
- Workflow management
- Asynchronous processing
- Relational database
How you’ll practise
- Requirements
- Estimate
- API and data
- High-level design
- Deep dives
- Wrap-up
Lala, personalized to you, gives a hint when you ask and reviews your design when you are ready.
What do interviewers look for?
In any backend system design round.
- Clarifies the requirements before drawing anything
- Uses a few numbers that actually change the design
- Draws a clear path from the client to storage
- Picks storage and caching with reasons, not by habit
- Explains what breaks first under load and how to fix it
- States trade-offs openly instead of claiming a perfect design
Questions people ask about this interview question
- Which design type is this question?
- It is a backend system question. You design a digital lost & found management platform and explain your choices the way you would in an interview.
- Is this question asked at entry level?
- It is marked Easy, so it suits engineers who are new to backend system interviews. It is also a good warm-up before harder questions.
- What should I cover first?
- Start with the requirements: what the system must do, how well it must do it and which numbers change the design. Agree on scope with the interviewer before you design anything.
- Can I practise it for free?
- It is a premium question. Sign up and unlock it once for 10 credits; it then stays unlocked. When you finish, Lala, your personalized AI mentor, can review your design for 30 credits.
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Updated · Written by the SevyDevy team