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Dafacto—new name, same blog (or, why I don’t suck any more)

I’ve always been interested in well-designed experiences, perhaps because behind all well-designed experiences are people who care. In the business I’m in—designing products and services—we often speak of the “user experience”. Since this blog chronicles my life, I thought a meaningful name for it would be “This User’s Experience”, and thereafter thisusersexperience.com was born.

That was a long name though, and having to spell it over the phone a few times (in Spanish) convinced me something had to be done. In a stroke of brilliance, I had it — ThisUX.com. You see, in our business, user experience is usually abbreviated “UX”.

You know those drawings where you see a beautiful woman but the rest of the world sees an old hag? Well, where I saw “This UX”, the rest of the world saw, “This SUX”. And that did suck, but I couldn’t think of a better option.

One of Makalu’s first customers, some fifteen years ago, was the City of Darmstadt, Germany. We designed their online news publication and implemented the CMS behind it. The name they chose was Dafacto, which I thought was really cool.

A few years ago, the City decided to centralize all their online activity around the more city-branded domain darmstadt.de, and initially they kept the dafacto domain dormant.

Perhaps due to the excellent service we’ve provided over the years, or more likely out of pity, the good folks at the City of Darmstadt recently decided to let me take over the domain I always admired, and today I’m excited to announce I’ve relaunched my blog at:

https://dafacto.com

(And I hope all four of you continue following along here.)

Published inTidbits

14 Comments

  1. JL JL

    Nice!

  2. Matt Henderson Matt Henderson

    Thanks, JL!

  3. Jamon Holmgren Jamon Holmgren

    I always thought it was tongue-in-cheek. 🙂

  4. Matt Henderson Matt Henderson

    Jamon, for the longest time, I tried to convince myself that it was. 😉

  5. Jamon Holmgren Jamon Holmgren

    As long as you keep posting the same awesomeness, you can rename it “thisreallydoessuck” and I won’t care. Probably my favorite blog.

    • Jamon
  6. Matt Henderson Matt Henderson

    Well, I must say that’s probably the nicest thing I’ve been told in a while! (Blush!)

  7. Silvia Wenz Silvia Wenz

    Gratulation Matt Henderson and good luck with the new domain 🙂

  8. Matt Henderson Matt Henderson

    Thanks you Silvia — who I am officially nominating as “The Nicest Person on the Internet”. 🙂

  9. Silvia Wenz Silvia Wenz

    Where is the Like Button for Comments 😉
    haha Thank you

  10. Christian Scazzieri Christian Scazzieri

    I think the perfect domain name would have been thisiterocks.com, ’cause this site does! 😉

  11. Matt Henderson Matt Henderson

    And I notice Christian, that that domain doesn’t seem to be taken! Hmmmmm… 🙂

  12. Christian Scazzieri Christian Scazzieri

    Go take it man! 🙂

  13. Justin Miller Justin Miller

    Hmm. When I see ‘defacto’ the first thing I’m reminded of is the Victorian-era word ‘facto’, which was a sort of underwear worn by unsavory people. From the London Times of the day:

    I have just had a long interview with a mutual friend of your’s and mine, who has surprised me by repeating your unfounded assertions with regard to me. Of course, what is merely your opinion, I have no right to resent, though I regret that it should be so unfavorable, but I have a right to demand your grounds for asserting that I am an arrant flirt, a hypocrite, and concerned in more than one dishonorable transaction whilst wearing dafacto under my waistcoat. Will you have the kindness to inform me with whom I have flirted, how played the hypocrite, and in what dishonorable transactions I have been concerned.

    So, you win some, you lose some, I guess.

    (I’m totally kidding, by the way. Just wanted to freak you out a little.)

  14. Matt Henderson Matt Henderson

    Thanks, Justin. If I recall, you were also the one who drew my attention to the drawbacks of the previous name, after which I could never look at my blog in the same way again. Now, each time I post an article, my mind will be drawn to underwear. 😉

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