I started with user personas and worked toward core features, but I spent way too long on the sharing permissions model and kind of lost the thread on scalability.
Start by clarifying the target users and core use cases, then outline the key components of the system (storage, sync, sharing, security) and discuss trade-offs. Focus on product decisions and how they impact user experience, scalability, and business goals, rather than deep technical implementation.
Pro tip: Anchor your design in a specific user scenario (e.g., enterprise teams) and tie features to measurable outcomes like adoption, retention, or cost per user. This shows product thinking and avoids generic feature lists.
Ask questions to understand target users (consumer vs. enterprise), primary use cases (sync, share, collaborate), and constraints (budget, timeline, compliance). Define what success looks like.
Outline the main user journeys: upload, organize, sync across devices, share with permissions, and collaborate. Prioritize features using a framework like MoSCoW or RICE.
Describe high-level components: storage backend (object storage, block storage), metadata database, sync engine, sharing service, and security layer. Explain how they interact.
Discuss trade-offs such as consistency vs. availability, build vs. buy for components, and how to handle scale, security, and cost. Justify choices based on user needs and business goals.
Identify success metrics (e.g., upload success rate, sync latency, sharing adoption) and propose an MVP with a roadmap for future enhancements based on user feedback.
AI-generated suggestions, not part of the candidate's original notes. May be inaccurate — verify before relying on them.