It’s a pity the BBC didn’t get this sorted to coincide with the general CSS reboot of 1st May, but it is nevertheless a cool project - not least as the winning design gets to have their design as the real homepage for a day.
This competition does raise some interesting points though.
The related blog states that :
It’s your homepage, (it’s your BBC) and I want to offer everyone the opportunity to feedback to us what they want it to look like.
OK, but I think it’s a safe bet that the submitted designs won’t have any meaningful user-testing behind them (though I’d like to be proved wrong) and so will refect the opinions of the designer. Granted the BBC might be able to derive some usability metrics from looking at common themes within the designs, such as highlighting a certain section of the site.
Also worth thinking about is that the BBC homepage is an international page. How will the submissions reflect the 2 versions of the page - the UK side and the world side? (Some of these questions might have been answered in the FAQs but the site has been largely unavailable all day.)
I’m looking forward to see the designs come in, might even get around to doing one myself.