"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.
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.