Standardization in Design: Are We There Yet?

Do you remember how mobile phones looked in the early 2000s? Some were shaped like pebbles, some flipped open, others had full keyboards. It was a bit chaotic, but exciting.

The same thing happened with cars, sneakers, headphones—you could see the experimentation everywhere. But over time, something shifted. Today, these products feel more alike. Clean lines, unified interactions, similar materials. Why?

This is the first in a series of posts where I’m sharing personal reflections on the state of design across emerging technologies, especially robotics. I’m not claiming to have all the answers. What I offer here is what I’ve seen as someone who works at the intersection of design and product development, particularly with machines meant to live alongside us.

Let’s get this out of the way: there’s no secret room where companies decide to make their products look the same. But the market often makes it feel that way.

When you step back and look at how mature consumer industries have evolved—phones, cars, even software—you start noticing a pattern. As products become more essential to daily life, they also become more standardized in both how they look and how they function. This is rarely about aesthetics alone. It's about function, familiarity, cost, and supply chains.

Let’s break it down.

Why do products start looking the same?

1. Familiarity
Most users say they want innovation. But what they actually need is reliability and familiarity. That’s what allows them to use a product without thinking too much. Mobile phones used to be symbols of identity and status. Today, they’re tools. Most people just want them to work. Design, in this context, serves clarity, not attention.

2. Industry maturity
The more mature an industry becomes, the more weight standards carry. It’s not just about the user anymore. Regulatory bodies, safety protocols, and manufacturing guidelines all start shaping the product long before a designer touches it.

3. Shared suppliers
As demand increases, industries develop shared ecosystems. Suppliers start serving multiple brands. This inevitably drives convergence. The same hinges, sensors, batteries, or chipsets are used across different product lines.

4. Production costs
Making something unique often costs more. To stay competitive, companies adopt common practices that have already been tested. These “best practices” often become invisible rules for how things get made.

5. Trends
Some of this standardization also comes from what people want at a given time. Minimalism, sustainability, quiet tech—these are cultural movements as much as they are design directions.

6. Competitive pressure
Ironically, the more competitive an industry gets, the more it tends to stabilize around shared solutions. When someone innovates successfully, others follow. The result is iteration more than revolution.

So where is robotics on this path?

We’re not there yet. And that’s okay.

Robotics is still a growing, experimental space. Especially in humanoid robotics, we don’t have widely accepted norms for proportion, movement, interface, or behavior. Spot from Boston Dynamics looks nothing like Digit from Agility. Social robots like Moxie or Pepper carry their own stylistic logic. Each of them represents a different guess at what works.

Why no standard yet? A few reasons:

• Different goals. One robot is meant for a warehouse, another for a school, another for a hospital. The environments and interactions are too varied to force a single mold.

• Lack of dominant platforms. In smartphones, we had iOS and Android. In robotics, we don’t yet have that kind of convergence. Everyone is building their own stack, from mechanical design to control software.

• Hardware complexity. Robotics involves sensors, actuators, perception systems, materials—all moving parts with no single winning combination yet.

• Human factors. We’re still learning what makes people comfortable around robots. What should a humanoid face look like? Should it have a face at all? How soft should it be? We haven’t figured it out, so there’s still room to explore.

What does standardization mean for design?

It’s not the enemy of innovation. In fact, when done right, it creates a stable foundation for designers to build more meaningful experiences. Think of it like road infrastructure. You can’t design a new car if every road is shaped differently.

Robotics will eventually find its shape. Not through committee decisions, but through trial, error, and adoption. The market will sort out what works. Until then, we’re in the messy, exciting stage. And that’s exactly where good design thrives.

If you work in robotics, or you’re just curious about how machines will live with us in the future, I hope this space helps you reflect on where we are, and where we might be headed.