Design Quora
PremiumProduct architectureEasy
- Question answer platform
- Duplicate detection
- Answer ranking
Quick answer
This product architecture interview question asks you to design Quora. 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 Quora, a question-and-answer site where people ask questions, write answers, upvote the best ones and follow topics. The hard parts are steering askers to an existing question instead of a duplicate, ranking answers well, and serving question pages to a huge logged-out audience from search engines.
What must the system do?
- Ask: As the user types a title, up to 5 similar existing questions are suggested; a new question gets 1 to 5 topics.
- Upvote and rank: Users upvote an answer or remove their upvote; answers on a question page are ordered by a ranking score.
How well must it do it?
- Fast question pages: Question pages return in under 300 ms at p99 and are cached for logged-out readers.
- Search friendly: Question pages are rendered on the server with stable URLs so search engines can index them.
What scale should you design for?
Use these numbers in your estimates.
The scale numbers unlock with this questionUnlock
Key concepts
- Question answer platform
- Duplicate detection
- Answer ranking
- Topic feed
- CDN
- Server side rendering
How you’ll practise
- Requirements
- Core entities
- API design
- Client and server flow
- Scale and edge cases
- 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 product architecture 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 product architecture question. You design Quora 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 product architecture 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