Simplique

Simplique is a design philosophy and accompanying toolkit aimed at making complex systems easier to understand and use by prioritizing clarity, minimalism, and consistent patterns. It emphasizes reducing cognitive load, employing progressive disclosure, and ensuring accessibility and readability across devices.

The term simplique was coined in 2018 by a European design studio and gained traction through a series of blog posts and case studies that outlined a catalog of patterns and practices for simplifying interfaces and information architecture.

Its core principles include minimizing extraneous elements, standardizing components and interaction flows, using typography and color to support legibility, and applying accessibility considerations by default. The approach also advocates evaluating tasks first and only revealing advanced options as needed.

Practitioners often rely on a Simplique Kit, a framework of reusable UI components, layout tokens, and interaction guidelines intended to be platform-agnostic. The kit promotes predictable behavior, semantic structure, and responsive adaptability.

Applications span web and mobile interfaces, dashboards, educational content, and public-sector forms, with case studies citing improvements in task completion, error rates, and user satisfaction when adopted under realistic constraints.

Reception is mixed. Proponents view simplique as a practical framework for usability and consistency, while critics caution that it risks over-minimalism or stifling expressive design if applied dogmatically. Empirical evaluation remains limited.