I started by trying to anchor on the user and their context, like who actually rents a kayak and what makes the experience frustrating.
Start by clarifying the scope and requirements with the interviewer, then outline a high-level design covering core user flows, system components, and data models. Dive into key technical challenges like real-time availability, booking concurrency, and scalability, while tying decisions back to business goals and customer experience.
Pro tip: Demonstrate Amazon leadership principles by proactively discussing trade-offs (e.g., consistency vs. availability) and proposing metrics to measure success, showing you think like an owner.
Ask questions to understand the target users, scale, key features (e.g., search, booking, payment), and non-functional requirements like availability and latency.
Sketch the main components: client apps, API gateway, microservices (inventory, booking, payment, user), databases, and external integrations (maps, payment).
Focus on challenging areas: real-time inventory management, concurrency control for bookings, and geospatial search for nearby kayaks.
Discuss how to handle peak loads (e.g., caching, sharding, queues), ensure fault tolerance, and design for multi-region availability.
Propose success metrics (e.g., booking conversion, utilization rate) and outline a plan for monitoring, feedback, and future enhancements.
AI-generated suggestions, not part of the candidate's original notes. May be inaccurate — verify before relying on them.