Judgment Lab

Week 4 of 8

Design under constraints

Goal: Practice choosing between options and naming the cost.

  • Live: A vague product requirement, a team of 3, and a 6-week deadline. Teams write competing designs and argue for them.
  • Reveal: Show how a real system with similar requirements evolved, including what broke at 10× scale.
  • Async: Write a one-page design: options considered, choice, trade-offs accepted, and what would make you change your mind.
  • Deliverable: Design doc v1, reviewed by a senior engineer.

Cases for this week

Design prompt · Week 4

Notifications in six weeks

Choose an approach for the first version. Name the two biggest trade-offs you're accepting, and say what would make you change your mind.

  • Intermediate
  • Example case

messaging · scope · trade-offs

Design prompt · Week 4

Where should the audit log live?

Choose a storage approach for the audit log. What are you giving up, and which part of your decision is hardest to reverse?

  • Advanced
  • Example case

data-modeling · storage · reversibility