Behind the Name: Customer Spotlight with Pauline Wee | The Art of Whimsical Software

Welcome to “Behind the Name: Customer Spotlight,” our series dedicated to sharing the journeys of inspiring builders. At name.com, we are a customer-first registrar, and our goal with this series is to shine a light on creatives who are name.com customers who make the internet more magical, one delightful project at a time. Your story deserves to be told, and your online presence begins with us.

In this installment of Behind the Name, we introduce you to Pauline Wee, a designer and engineer. She believes that software should be opinionated, visionary, and effective. She hosts events celebrating new interfaces and makes whimsical software. She’s delivered talks at the Yale Majority AI Symposium, Valio Con, and various design events in San Francisco and New York City. 

A conversation with Pauline Wee

Tell us a bit about your journey into tech.

I actually grew up in the Philippines, in an area called Manila, which is the capital. I had a really diverse experience growing up there and had a non-tech childhood. But as I got into high school, there was this sense that all these interesting things were happening on the internet.

I became a kid who grew up online. When I would come home and be on the family computer, that was when my world expanded. I could play games online, I could hang out with my friends, and I felt this limitless world of possibility. 

From that spark came this desire to learn more about technology and to be part of the people who make these kinds of products. I started out thinking I’d be more of a designer, and over time I wanted to unblock myself from design and build the things I was imagining in my head.

That led me to study computer science at NYU and where I ended up now.

How would you describe your style as a builder?

I would say I’m a zero-to-one kind of builder. I usually get gripped by a crazy idea, and then I just want to build it. 

The project that really kicked it off was called Shrump. I was slouching over my computer all the time. Which made me think, “I should build something that calls me out, something that makes fun of me whenever I slouch over my computer.”

And that turned into the very first project called Shrump.cam. It’s a tiny computer vision program that measures the distance between your facial features and your shoulders, and if it sees you slouching on your webcam, it blares a noise and shows a shrimp.

I put it out on Twitter just for gags, and it really took off. It showed me how there’s such a love and desire for these software products. Studying at NYU and having gone through a more traditional computer science background, I think you get some of the whimsy beaten out of you.

There are these software products that are very complex and require lots of technical focus. But there’s also the side of the web that got people into tech in the first place. It’s joyful and whimsical, and an idea you really enjoyed and just want to make something you can use.

What is your absolute favorite site or app you’ve vibe-coded so far?

So my absolute favorite project has definitely been Cafe Pomodoro (cafe.pauwee.com). It’s this co-working timer app where you can basically co-work with a bunch of cute illustrated friends or look out a window – which is a video of a view out of an Amsterdam cafe – or you can just work in silence.

What made that so special to me was that it brought so many little parts of me into it. Some pages are very multimedia collagey. Some have hand-drawn illustrations or little characters that I created. Some have the tiniest micro-interactions, like having a hand-drawn pause and play button or having a bathroom that you can go to to see how many drinks you’ve consumed and what you’ve done in that time.

I use it so often with my friends because it makes us all happier to use it. It’s been really rewarding. 

You launched World Time Bestie on worldtimebestie.app. Why was a .app domain the right fit for this project?

I launched World Time Bestie on a .app domain mostly ’cause it was an app, and I felt like that was the right name for it. .dev felt more like a dev tool, but World Time Bestie (worldtimebestie.app) is an app where you could check where your besties were across different time zones, and the .app domain felt like it reflected the spirit of what I was making.

I think .com felt too much like a website, too much like a landing page. .app just felt like the right shape and size for the small but very whimsical software product I was trying to put out there.

When you get an idea to develop something new, at what point does the domain name factor, and what is your process for choosing it?

When I’m developing something new, I think sometimes the concept comes with a URL, but sometimes it’ll come later down the line. It’ll arrive as I’m thinking about it. I look up a few different names and judge from there.

A lot of the time I’ll have a sense for whether it’s more of a website versus an app, something for fun versus something more rigid. The name is such a big part of an app because it’s how people refer to it. It’s how people share it. 

It’s different from case to case, but when I find the name that fits, it’s hard to let go of it. And I think that’s why domains are such a big factor. Sometimes when I find a domain that I really love, it’s so hard to pick another. When it’s the one, it’s the one.

The name can make or break a project. I’ve definitely had projects where choosing the right name felt like the most consequential part of it. Sure, you can build something, but if you don’t give it that sharp, snappy name that people can recall the moment they think of your project, it really kind of goes to waste.

The whole kind of software I build and I think about is almost like a fashion item or a consumer object. It’s very much defined by the culture around it, and it’s defined by how easily people can bring it to mind. Usually, if I think of it the moment I conceptualize the project, I’ll try to buy the domain immediately, so it’s locked down. But if not, I’ll usually buy it the moment I ship it so that I can connect it to my Vercel and just get it rolling. By the time I launch something, I’ve always secured my domain, and I think that really helps me get it off the ground with that brand already cemented in.

How do you decide between choosing a .dev domain versus a .app domain for different types of projects?

When I think about using different domains or choosing between .app or .dev. I always think about my end user, and I always think about the type of vibe I’m trying to communicate.

I believe .app is a nice general-purpose domain ending ’cause it applies to all sorts of apps, and it really gives people that sense of legitimacy. It clearly works as an app, and I can expect that level of interactivity with it. With .dev you get a more technical focus. That segmentation is really important because that domain could travel farther than you could possibly imagine. It’s a sign of credibility or legibility to that end user that no other thing can communicate as a domain can.

When millions of people hit digibouquet.com all at once and crashed the site, did your traditional engineering instincts take over to handle the outage?

When DigiBouquet.com hit five million users, which is actually insane, I was bowled over.

It was Valentine’s Day, which makes sense: bouquets. And I remember panicking over my Vercel bill initially and being like, “How am I gonna pay for this? How am I gonna figure this out?” I was also surprised by the waves of people messaging me saying that this product had really made their day. I was so touched by the power of what I’d made in a matter of weeks, to give them something special to remember people, celebrate them, or just make someone feel seen in a difficult moment.

On the other hand, I was just trying to keep the site from going down. Thanks to Vercel for their help in keeping the site up. There were also a lot of optimizations. I actually only shipped after the fact to really make the site more performant, make it less of a resource-intensive application, and to make sure that it was lightweight and could work performantly across the globe.

Shout out to name.com for really setting the house on fire and getting it out there!

Now that you’ve experienced building a site that reached millions, what’s the next feature or project you’re excited to launch?

I have a list of maybe 100 different things that I’m just slowly chipping away at, given the finite amount of free time I have.

One thing I really enjoyed shipping recently was a paper plane glider app where you can use the webcam to fly a paper plane with your body. I also really wanna work on a bunch of personal item concepts, like a charm bracelet maker where you can make little charms that connect to different websites or different images or pictures.

There’s a limitless world out there, and every day I’m inspired by things I see while walking down the street or talking to my friends or even hosting my demo days. There are lots of projects in the pipeline. More to come.

View all of Pauline’s projects at paulinewee.com and get your .app or .dev domain at name.com/google-registry.