NEXT
who says no?
we never asked why
what we thought:
they want more options

what we saw:
they want fewer
WHO?
DECIDED
LATER
DECIDED
ASK BAVO
KILL LIST
what breaks at scale?
trust before features
PARKING
NOT NOW
DECIDED
everyone agreed.
nobody changed anything.
who owns this after we leave?
LATER
PARKING
who is missing from this room?
default matters more than the setting
the spreadsheet still wins
who owns this after we leave?
ask what they do on a bad day
NEXT
two clicks, not nine
NOT NOW
ugly and shipped beats pretty and pending
stop asking, start showing
park it
NOT NOW
measure it or drop it
call it a pilot
the spreadsheet still wins
the data is already there
the form is the product
the second-best idea won
what if we just delete it?
what we thought:
they want more options

what we saw:
they want fewer
park it
NEXT
LATER
LATER
NEXT
everyone agreed.
nobody changed anything.
give it back to them Friday
the data is already there
the fix was a sentence,
not a screen
MAYBE
OPEN
budget: yes
timing: no
sponsor: unclear
LATER
ASSUMPTIONS
ship the ugly version
the fix was a sentence,
not a screen
RISKS
WEEK 1
two clicks, not nine
MAYBE
NOT NOW
PARKING
that meeting could be a rule
budget: yes
timing: no
sponsor: unclear
legal needs a fortnight
OPEN
the spreadsheet still wins
LATER
ship the ugly version
what if we just delete it?
KILL LIST
ask the support team first
ask what they do on a bad day
stop designing for the demo
three teams, one form,
nobody owns it
ask what they do on a bad day
NOT NOW
YES
we never asked why
LATER
NEXT
RISKS
everyone agreed.
nobody changed anything.
day 1 is not day 100
NEXT
we are solving the manager’s problem
we never asked why
the fix was a sentence,
not a screen
NEXT
the data is already there
ASK BAVO
kill the dashboard
OPEN
NOT NOW
the edge case is 30% of users
stop designing for the demo
Antwerp, March
"can we just build it and see?"
— someone, every single time
everybody could name the problem.
nobody had seen it.
printed the analytics.
nobody read past page 2.
so we stopped printing.
four hats, one person
weeks.
not months.
two days,
one wall
the board is the site
sketch napkin — the first version of
the discovery lanes, drawn badly
none of this was in the brief
ship it
friday
keep the mess. it's the evidence.
the side projects are the portfolio
keep
going
things I keep relearning:
1. show it early, even ugly
2. the quiet one in the room is right
3. nobody reads the deck
coffee #4. still going.
said it out loud. found out I was wrong.
"so who actually decides?"
— the question that ends most workshops
agenda, day 2
10:00 stakeholder alignment
10:00 build the thing instead
we shipped on day 3
Every one of these rooms started as a corner of a real board, in a real room, with real people arguing.
shipped-things checklist:
write the case study
just link the running thing
Agency lead
Design mentor
UX strategist
AI-native builder
this bit
is new
bavo@azarko.com
+32 496 41 22 96
Turning complex ideas into human experiences.
Helping teams see what users feel.
And then building it with them — in weeks.
BAVO LODEWYCKX
Strategy that ships.
YES. this one.
Where digital strategy meets human reality —
and ends up as something you can actually click.
HOW I WORK
Research and building used to be two phases,
handed from one to the other. I run them as one.
Talk to people. Watch what they actually do.
Build the thing. Same week, not next quarter.
Put it in their hands and shut up.
Keep what works. Bin the rest, guilt-free.
...and again, tighter each time
I work in the AI tools, not about them.
Mix structure and spontaneity so people stay curious, not cautious.
When people feel safe, they go further.
Design is the art of making people move in the same direction.
phase 1: research
phase 2: design
phase 3: build
no. not anymore.
WHAT I'M HIRED AS
Four hats. The last one is new, and it changes the other three.
Agency lead
Running a design team — hiring, direction, and keeping the work honest when the deadline starts pushing.
Design mentor
One-on-one and with whole teams. Lately mostly: making designers AI-native instead of AI-anxious.
UX strategist
The messy front end. Turning a vague ambition into a direction a team can actually walk.
AI-native builder
I build what I propose. Prototypes, tools, deployed things — usually inside the same week.
new
Most people pick one of these and stay there. The work I like happens where they overlap — where the person setting the direction is also the one who builds the first version of it.
AI-DRIVEN DISCOVERY
A discovery track that ends in something that works —
not a deck about something that might.
How long? It scales with the size of the thing.
One call settles that →
week 1 week 2 week 3 week 4 …
Talking to your people
Building the actual thing
Putting it in front of them
these three
overlap —
on purpose.
You walk away with
A working prototype your own users have already used, a direction backed by what you saw instead of what you hoped, and the thing itself — running, not screenshotted.
...or we keep going
If it's working, I stay embedded with the team. We keep shipping — and your people learn to work this way without me.
THINGS I ACTUALLY SHIPPED
Not case studies about work I supervised. Things I built, deployed, and use myself.
all of it solo
Showcase
One link and one password for a client, instead of a zip file in an email. Prototypes, decks and documents — versioned, so the newest always wins.
live · work.azarko.com
MoneyCat
Built because every budgeting app wanted me to plan, and what I needed was to see. Reads my bank exports and shows where the money actually goes.
private · happy to walk you through it
Dubwave crate
A record collection that thinks in riddims. Joins my drive, Apple Music and rekordbox into one graph, because no DJ software understands dub.
in progress
All three built solo, with AI in the loop from the first sketch to the deploy. That's not a footnote — it's the whole point.
This is what "AI-native" looks like when it isn't a slide.
YAPPING
Talking about the work — mostly out loud, sometimes into a microphone.
SUX podcast
Long conversations about design work that don't fit in a LinkedIn post. Made with Thorsten Jonas.
Listen to it →
since 2021 · 10k listens
UX Beers
I took the meetup over in 2019 and ran it until 2026. It grew from 1,200 to 4,700 members on our watch.
2019 to 2026
Talks & workshops
Lately mostly one subject: what actually changes when a design team goes AI-native.
Book me for your event →
Half of what I know came from saying it out loud to a room and finding out which half was wrong.
Hello, fellow young people
Want this talk for your team? →
LET'S WORK,
THINK, CREATE
TOGETHER
Start a discovery track
Tell me the thing you can't get a straight answer about. We'll know a lot more in a few weeks.
bavo@azarko.com
start here
Not sure it's a whole track yet? An hour on a call usually settles that.
+32 496 41 22 96
WhatsApp / Signal
LinkedIn
/in/bavo-lodewyckx
Antwerpen, BE