In an era where environmental responsibility is no longer optional, Cisco is demonstrating that thoughtful design and sustainability can drive innovation together. During Cisco’s WebexOne event held last week in San Diego, I had the opportunity to spend a bit of time with Gavin Ivester, Vice President Design, who shared insights into how the company is weaving environmental consciousness into the very fabric of its product development process.
It is an understatement to say that Ivester, who has been with Cisco for a bit over four years now, brings serious design chops to his role. This is a guy who started his career as an industrial designer at Apple, went on to be the Global Creative Director for Footwear at Nike, and then took that expertise to Puma, where he led product vision, business strategy, and the creative agenda for a global team. He eventually ended up as the Head of Design at Bang & Olufsen, the legendary Danish audio brand, where he met Cisco’s Snorre Kjesbu, another guy who’s pretty passionate about product design, and who ultimately convinced him to make the move to Cisco.
A New Design Language Built on Sustainability
For starters, Cisco has long embraced sustainability as a core tenet of the company’s overall mission. That said, one of the key messages coming out of this year’s WebexOne event is the company’s commitment to being a design-led organization, with sustainability and inclusiveness at its very core. This isn’t merely about adding green features as an afterthought — it’s about fundamentally rethinking how products are conceived, designed, and delivered.
The challenge, as Ivester explains, is making design aesthetics actively drive sustainability rather than treating them as competing priorities. This requires deep collaboration across disciplines, partnering closely with engineering and supply chain teams to ensure that beautiful design and environmental responsibility reinforce each other.
The Ceiling Mic Pro Success Story
One standout example of this philosophy in action is the Ceiling Mic Pro product. Through innovative design thinking, Ivester shared the Cisco team achieved a remarkable 45% reduction in product size while completely eliminating plastic from the packaging. This wasn’t just an environmental win — it delivered tangible business benefits as well.
The smaller footprint meant reduced transportation costs and lower carbon emissions across the supply chain. The plastic-free packaging addressed a growing consumer demand for environmentally responsible products. Most importantly, it proved that sustainability improvements don’t require compromising on product quality or functionality.
A Practical Rule for Sustainable Design
Ivester shared a guiding principle that the team uses: reducing mass serves as a proxy for sustainability. It’s an elegantly simple rule that creates alignment across teams. When you reduce the size and weight of a product, you naturally use fewer materials, require less packaging, decrease shipping costs, and lower the environmental impact of transportation.
This approach brings together industrial design, engineering, and environmental goals into a single, measurable objective that everyone can work toward.
Bringing the Human Side of Technology to Live
It is obvious that Ivester brings a rich perspective on how design-forward companies approach sustainability and it was great to be able to spend some time exploring our mutual appreciation for, and the importance of, great design. The influence of these experiences is evident in Cisco’s approach — treating packaging not as an afterthought but as an integral part of the product experience and environmental footprint. Beyond that, Ivester, Kjesbu, and the entire Cisco team is deeply committed to what they call “bringing the human side of technology to life.”
Understanding that how a user feels when using a product is important, and designing backgrounds and online experiences that set a mood is part of that human side of technology that we often don’t think about, but we don’t have to — the Webex team is doing the work for us. I’ll cover more on this later, but we will see the newly designed backgrounds and other cinematic meeting experiences announced at WebexOne in Q4 of this year.
The Challenge Ahead
One of the ongoing challenges in hardware design is that end users often don’t see or appreciate packaging innovations. Unlike consumer products where unboxing is part of the experience, enterprise technology customers may not directly witness the environmental benefits of plastic-free, optimized packaging. Yet Cisco is committed to these improvements because they align with corporate sustainability goals and customer values, even when they’re not immediately visible.
Building a Design-Driven, Sustainability-Focused Culture
What emerges from Cisco’s approach is a vision of a truly integrated design organization — one where sustainability isn’t a separate initiative or checkbox but rather a fundamental design principle. By making environmental impact a core consideration from the earliest stages of product development, Cisco is demonstrating that the future of enterprise technology lies at the intersection of exceptional design and environmental responsibility.
As companies across industries grapple with their environmental impact, Cisco’s experience offers a compelling model: sustainability and design excellence aren’t competing priorities. When properly integrated, they’re complementary forces that drive innovation, reduce costs, and create products that serve both customers and the planet.
This conversation highlights just one aspect of Cisco’s sustainability journey. As the company continues to innovate in hardware design, the principles of reducing mass, eliminating unnecessary materials, and making sustainability core to the design language will undoubtedly shape future product generations.
This article was originally published on LinkedIn.
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