Designing a modern system involves navigating complex requirements to create cohesive and functional designs. As a designer, you’ll need to understand these requirements and guide the design process effectively, addressing both broad and specific topics in product design.

In this course, you will design APIs for well-known systems such as YouTube, Stripe, and Zoom, understanding how these APIs integrate into the larger product ecosystem. You’ll begin by discussing recurring concepts, using them as foundational building blocks. You’ll trace the lifecycle of each API call from the client to the service to meet functional requirements. Additionally, you’ll use a reference back-end implementation to demonstrate how an API call operates, with a focus on minimizing client-visible latency to create competitive APIs and products.

This course prepares you for product architecture design interviews by examining systems from a client’s perspective and discusses how client calls interact with the back-end system.