When “Real-Time” Is Not Real: Reliability, Trust, and Continued Use of the JLT App
Course report for Consumer Behaviour in Online Contexts. Jönköping University.
What I did
I wrote this report on my own and chose both the app and the question. I extended the Technology Acceptance Model with two factors, perceived reliability and trust, and analysed structured notes from five semi-structured interviews with regular JLT users: first against the model, then for whatever it left out. The themes became five changes JLT could make.
Summary
The JLT app sells tickets and plans trips for public transport in Jönköping County, and it shows departures live. People make small decisions on that live data, like when to leave home or whether to wait indoors. The report asks what a wrong countdown does to their trust in the app and to how they use it.
The five participants used the app in different situations: a student commuting daily, an office worker, a commuter travelling with children, a high school student and a newcomer to the city. For tickets and planning, the app held up. Live tracking didn’t. Participants described buses that showed as coming and never came, a bus still “in 2 mins” after it had passed (which cost one of them a meeting), an icon jumping between streets, and “Live” times that turned out to be the timetable.
Trust dropped for that one feature and held for the rest. All five kept using the app and worked around the countdown. One arrives five minutes early “no matter what the app says”. Another screenshots her ticket, because the app has crashed on her during a ticket inspection. In the model’s terms, usefulness and ease of use explain why people keep the app, and reliability and trust explain why they stop relying on its live data.
Five people and interview notes can show how the problem plays out, but they can’t say how common it is. The report ends with five changes for JLT: show clearly when live data is unavailable, label each time as live, estimated or scheduled with when it last updated, let people follow one trip and get warned if it’s cancelled, keep active tickets available offline, and send disruption alerts in English as well as Swedish.