I recently learned of the OG App from 2022, which offered an ad-free and simpler experience to users frustrated with Instagram changes.

The app didn’t last – it couldn’t last – but it was a fascinating statement.

In a different corner of the internet, Michael Leggett, one of the former Gmail designers, created Simplify – an alternative “shell” to Gmail:

Hundreds of improvements (small and large) to streamline, simplify, and enhance Gmail’s design and functionality. Hide the features you don’t use, customize the ones you do including setting the list and message width and fonts.

It seems this attempt is not running afoul of any Google rules. I enjoyed reading about the project more on its website, especially this bit:

Bad design can occur for a number of reasons including but not limited to:

• Our needs as users are not well understood, prioritized, or aligned with the company’s goals.
• Entropy: The natural decline of products over time as the vision decays or blurs and new features are conceived without consideration of the whole and added faster than the system’s overall design and architecture can evolve to support them.
• Good design is hard. Good design is more than making a product pretty. It is about having the right capabilities in an intuitive, respectful, and well-crafted offering. I hope to expand on this topic in future posts.

I know ad blockers and “reader modes” exist, but these alternative shells go much further and change the original app’s design. I wonder what other examples of that are out there.