ANSWER: Why, me, of course! True as that may be, there are more definitive answers. For example, in their respective times, it could be said that both represent phenomenal growth industries, both induce profound changes to the landscape and society, and both attract the movers and the shakers. More important for me is that the internet is in many ways a continuation of a process set in place 200 years ago when canals were seen as the best way to get there from here.

Transportation operates point to point. As a system of rails or roads or airline routes expands, it connects with other systems and forms branches of its own. Eventually we end up with a web. This is exactly what we have with the World Wide Web. The common denominator for all these systems is improved communication and reduced effects of physical distance.

WHY is this interesting to me? I'm an architect. Spatial forms and patterns intrigue me. I think of my online help systems in the inverse. That is, I think of myself as moving around inside the system instead of observing it from without. In Thinking from within the box I spoke of my systems as being a series of information centers. To use the railroad analogy, Grand Central Terminal in New York would be the ultimate information center. Since I wrote the original article, I expanded the concept to differentiate the types of centers. There are distribution centers, destination centers, and transition centers.

GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL is a great distribution center. Remembering from my youth, immediately accessible from the main concourse are information, tickets, movies, shops, services, waiting area, restaurant, lower level, mezzanine AND connections to trains, subways, streets, and taxis. While standing in this grand space, a person could spot all of these choices just by looking about. Such a space suggests a home page that gives you plenty of choices about what you can do, but may also provide immediate access to activities or information that encourage you to linger awhile. (I don't mean that a home page has to be like this, just that it is a familiar and valid approach.)

The station at the other end of your trip is the destination center. The destination center could be equally impressive as Grand Central Terminal (or not); and on the return trip, the assignment of distribution and destination are reversed. Thus, Grand Central Terminal is also a great destination center.

A transition center is more like an ancillary center or space that connects to other centers. It has a specialized use in that it expands the array of options that are normally found in the distribution center. It generally has no content and is not a place you would normally want to linger.

THE ESSENTIAL POINT is that our actions on the railway or the web come down to two categories: 1) linger or 2) make a selection and move on. What facilitates these actions is our design of the information centers. Just as in architecture, where such things as shape, proportion, color, texture, scale, and organization have a profound effect on whether or not we like a space or find it useful, the design of our web pages and online systems helps determine whether or not a person finds them useful or inviting enough to return.

We're still learning the ropes and defining the issues: balancing style and esthetics with functionality, organizing in web-like fashion rather than top down, curbing our verbosity, dividing monolithic discourse into digestible chunks, managing complexity, learning user preferences, and so forth. A lot of thought is being expended in this discovery. Two quite different approaches can be found on the web sites of Jakob Nielsen, Ph.D. (useit) and Mark Bernstein (serious hypertext and hypertext kitchen). The middle ground can be seen in Patrick Lynch's and Sarah Horton's online Web Style Guide: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites. Nielsen addresses the usability needs of the masses, and focuses on commonalties among users, platforms, and devices. Bernstein celebrates the new technology and explores ways to get the most from it. Lynch and Horton represent the common wisdom. I recommend examining all these sites in order to understand the issues involved. The site addresses are:

   useit:   http://www.useit.com   Click

   serious hypertext:   http://www.eastgate.com   Click

   hypertext kitchen:   http://www.hypertextKitchen.com/   Click

   Web Style Guide:   http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/   Click

WHATEVER PHILOSOPHIES or strategies we choose to embrace, I believe that seeing our online travels as similar to those we make by way of our transportation systems will help us visualize the spatial organization that online design entails. Imagining the interior spatial arrangement of a familiar building, such as a transportation center, is a good way to begin the journey.

Related to Making the connection:

    Thinking from within the box.  Click