The Eco-Value Blueprint for Sustainable AI Workflows

The AI × Design Copenhagen series by l x l - learning experience lab and IxDF - Interaction Design Foundation presents its 5th edition, on what digital and AI features cost to run, and what value they give back, while the design is still open to change.

Every feature has a running cost that never shows on the screen. One AI prompt can use several times the energy of a standard web search. Data centres as a whole are projected to use close to 1,000 TWh of electricity in 2026, roughly what Japan uses in a year.

Nobody chose that footprint on purpose. It adds up from many small decisions in design and product work, made at a point where the cost of each one was invisible. Most teams do not ignore it. The tools in the room have no place to show it.

What this evening is about

We are not arguing for a single direction. Some AI and digital features bring a lot of value, and others add weight for little in return. Environmental cost alone cannot tell you which is which, and neither can value alone. The evening is about holding both in view at once, so that the people who shape a service can make informed calls about how much it is used and what that use creates.

That matters most in the design stage. Decisions about data, requests and compute are still easy to change there. Once they sit in the infrastructure, they are hard to reopen. Designers often do not own those decisions, but they can make the cost visible to the people who do, and that is where this session starts.

Who this is for

Service designers × Product designers × Product managers × Engineers

Some of you have been at it twenty years, some for two. If you work on a digital service that uses AI, or plan to, you will have something to add at the table.

What to expect

Marius Barbuța opens with a short talk on bringing environmental cost and stakeholder value into the same conversation during design. He shares one way of doing that, the Eco-Value Digital Service Blueprint, which adds a Line of Sustainability to the service blueprint, and a case from a product team that used it on a live service.

After a short break, you work in small groups on a pre-mapped AI service. The aim is to see where an AI feature justifies its compute and where it burns energy for marginal gain, and to hear how the same touchpoint looks from a designer’s, a PM’s and an engineer’s seat. A few tables then share what they found.

No laptops and no pre-work. We work on printed A3 sheets.

Speaker and facilitator

Marius Barbuța · Service & Product Designer, digital sustainability practitioner

Agenda

17:00 Arrive, mingle and meet people17:30 Talk: The Eco-Value Blueprint for Sustainable AI Workflows18:15 Workshop: Table exercise, readouts and synthesis, Q&A19:30 Networking until we close the room at 20:00

Where and when

Station, Frederiksberg · Thursday 19 November 2026, 17:00–20:00

Event donations

Pay what suits you, from DKK 0 to 150, so the evening stays open to everyone. l x l is a volunteer association, and any surplus from an evening goes into our next nonprofit community initiatives.

We’d love to see you at a table. If you know someone who works on AI features, please bring them along.