Analyzing Social Media to Assess User Satisfaction with Transport for London’s Oyster

ABSTRACT

What items contribute to user satisfaction with large ubiquitous systems? This article reports on studies that seek answers to this question through the context of London Transport’s Oyster system. Two studies are presented. In the first, an existing quantitative instrument (End-User Computing Satisfaction, or EUCS), originally developed to evaluate satisfaction with mandatory use systems, is used to measure satisfaction through a small survey. In the second, Twitter data are used to demonstrate how broader items contribute to user satisfaction. The first study demonstrates that the EUCS constructs of Content, Accuracy, Format, Ease of use, and Timeliness are still statistically valid, although discriminant problems exist. However, the second study, the analysis of Twitter activity, reveals that Content and Format are not relevant to Oyster users, and that Accuracy and Timeliness are conceptualized very differently. Moreover, Ubiquity emerges as an important item contributing to satisfaction, or in some cases dissatisfaction.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the Ministry of Higher Education in Saudi Arabia.

Notes on contributors

Alanawd Alshehri

Alanawd Alshehri is an Assistant Professor of Information Management at the University of Tabuk. Her doctoral research dealt with using social media data for e-government systems evaluation, in particular using Twitter data for satisfaction evaluation. Her research interests include e-government, technology and information management, information systems and social media.

Robert O’Keefe

Robert O’Keefe is Vice-Principal and Dean at Royal Holloway, University of London. Bob conducts research at the intersection of Information Systems, consumer behavior and human–computer interaction, particularly where users have to interact with complex models. He is a previous editor of the European Journal of Information Systems.