Exercise: Classify these products and identify the dominant archetype and the most dangerous seam.
| Product | Primary | Secondary | Key Seam |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spotify | A1 Search & Discovery | A4 Media Delivery | Freshness lag between listen signal and recommendation update |
| Airbnb | A3 Marketplace & Transaction | A1 Search & Discovery | Search ranking must reflect real-time availability or bookings fail |
| GitHub | A6 Platform & API | A5 Data Intelligence | Index lag on large repos degrades developer experience |
| Twitter/X | A2 Social & Communication | A1 Search & Discovery | Push vs. pull fan-out tradeoff at celebrity follower scale |
| Snowflake | A5 Data Intelligence | A6 Platform & API | Stable SQL interface while storage layer evolves independently |
In each case, identifying the archetype takes 30 seconds and immediately focuses the design review on the right questions.