Ask HN: Do you know of any development “case studies”?

I know of a couple design "case studies" where someone took the website or app of a company and gave it their own spin just to see what it could end up as. I wonder if there's any similar articles or examples of this being done in development.

It's a completely different ballgame since we usually don't really know what the driving force behind a site is, but it would be interesting to read up on something like this imho.