Since the introduction of the World Wide Web in 1993, web pages and web technologies have undergone a number of face-lifts. Not only do information providers have to adopt new technologies when they become available but users also have to cope with an ever fast-growing amount of information on the Internet. To most people, the web has significant influence on our daily lives. The aims of this paper are to examine impacts of the changing web on researchers in the field of transportation studies and report the results of usability of Lotus Domino in our two case studies.

Section 1 gives an overview of transportation research methodologies. Research elements such as literature review, data collection and compilation, quantitative analysis and modelling are briefly discussed. More importantly, in this section, associations of these research elements and the use of WWW are explored. Two simple case studies in the Institute for Transport Studies (ITS) at the University of Leeds are used in this paper for illustrative purpose. The first case study is to design a dynamic, web-based survey questionnaire. This has been used as part of an ESRC research project on "Cycling and Urban Mode Choice" at the University of Leeds. The second case study is to devise an active, Internet resources directory with maximum automated facilities. Lotus Domino is chosen as the web tool in the two case studies.

Section 2 gives a brief account of Lotus Domino in terms of its infrastructure and architecture. Lotus Domino is the name assigned to the server component of Lotus Notes. Notes is a groupware product, giving users the ability to share documents, e-mail and calendars across the network. The Domino server has a web server component, and the whole product makes it as easy to create documents for Notes use as for use on the web. Documents within Notes can be accessed in two ways: in a form, which views a single document, or a view, which works with multiple documents. These forms and views can be made accessible via the web. Assessments of the usability of these forms and views are then made based on our two case studies. Results of the assessment exercise are reported in this section. From our findings, the dynamic nature of Notes translates very effectively to the web. When a document is altered, it is automatically updated on the web. Views are built dynamically each time they are accessed. Information that has updated is immediately accessible to the user just by hitting "reload" on the browser. A variety of functions are available within Notes and many of these functions work on the web. For example, the current date is easily accessible, as are many CGI variables. Although it is possible to create sophisticated functionality within Notes, in simple form it is not necessary for users to learn any form of programming techniques to be able to create dynamic information. It is one of the attractive attributes of Notes.

Section 3 depicts the first case study which is to design a dynamic, web-based survey questionnaire. This has been used as part of an ESRC research project on "Cycling and Urban Mode Choice" at the University of Leeds. The availability and easy access of the web offer an alternative option of collecting data information in such a way that it is less labour-intensive, less costly and more efficient. Web-based forms play an important role in this area of interest, statistical surveys. A web-based questionnaire can simply be an HTML form with a CGI program behind it. However, in general, the data from the questionnaire will need to be held in a database for further processing to yield results. Using Lotus Notes, an interactive questionnaire became possible. In this section, details of the design and the results are explained. To sum up, two questionnaires were created in different degrees of complexity. The first questionnaire was a single form which asked the user to select options from dropdown menus or check boxes. Users needed to answer all the questions and then press Submit. At this stage the questionnaire was stored as a Notes document. It was possible to analyse and inspect results dynamically by reloading the relevant Notes view of the data, showing instantly the number of responses that fitted the necessary criteria for the next phase of the survey. A more advanced questionnaire was constructed where the user was presented the questionnaire in separate sections. Subsequent sections were displayed with varying criteria and categories depending on responses to the previous section. In each case, a single Notes document held the questionnaire response, fields being populated from data entered on the separate forms presented to the user.

It is followed by, in Section 4, a full account of another research work that was carried out in ITS at the University of Leeds. The second case study is to develop an active, Internet resources directory with maximum automated facilities using Lotus Notes. Since 1993, there has been a collection of web sites relevant to transport researchers available on the ITS web server. The collection was maintained manually, partly as a result of web searches and partly as a result of requests for links to be added. Using Notes, the collection of these transport and transport-related web sites was now made dynamic. Although information still has to be entered by hand, this can now be done by anyone requesting a link by accessing a web-based form generated by Notes. This form consists of a set of fill-in fields, dropdown menus and check boxes aimed at gaining sufficient information from the user to automatically place the requested link into the correct section of the collection. Certain data is also automatically added as the user submits the request, including date and time, and remote IP address. When the collection was purely HTML based, new categories had to be built manually. Using Notes, new categories can be created by the user submitting a link to the collection. Any updated information data needs to be cross-checked manually, but by simply accessing the Notes form containing the data submitted and changing the category, the data is automatically moved to the new category. An agent running within Notes is scheduled to check all hypertext links in the collection once a week to ensure all recorded links are valid. If a link fails, that link is dynamically removed from the collection and placed in a designated area for further checks.

In Section 5, it portrays the present work undertaking to increase the level of sophistication of the two case studies, in conjunction with a list of future research agenda. For instance, work is in progress to modify the submission of links and further automate the process. When a user submits a link, Notes will generate and e-mail a password and internal URL to the user.

When the user accesses this URL, the submission can be completed. The collection list is then updated instantly. This gives the advantage of auditability, as the user must possess a valid e-mail address in order to complete the submission. This forms a means of data verification.