they print it anyway
nobody uses the export
DECIDED
DECIDED
KILL LIST
YES
LATER
three people said the same thing
ugly and shipped beats pretty and pending
they print it anyway
this is a policy problem, not a design one
legal needs a fortnight
the fix was a sentence,
not a screen
YES
MAYBE
NEXT
NEXT
NOT NOW
the spreadsheet still wins
call it a pilot
park it
call it a pilot
WHO?
one screen, one job
YES
YES
everyone agreed.
nobody changed anything.
make it boring
ASSUMPTIONS
we are solving the manager’s problem
she does this 40x a day
three teams, one form,
nobody owns it
the data is already there
NEXT
OPEN
RISKS
test it with the night shift
measure it or drop it
the workaround IS the requirement
one screen, one job
ship the ugly version
who is missing from this room?
the spreadsheet still wins
WHO?
name it in their words
we keep redesigning the symptom
make it boring
the fix was a sentence,
not a screen
stop designing for the demo
the second-best idea won
they print it anyway
NEXT
the form is the product
RISKS
who owns this after we leave?
make it boring
we never asked why
DECIDED
WEEK 1
the data is already there
she does this 40x a day
LATER
WHO?
RISKS
nobody reads the tooltip
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