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April 13, 2004
"HELLO? I'M ON THE TRAIN/BUS/WAY TO AN EARLY DEATH AT THE HANDS OF MY FELLOW COMMUTERS ..."
Jakob Nielsen considers a study into why mobile phones are annoying ...
"The researchers asked test participants to rate how annoyed they were by the mobile phone's ring tone. ... However, people didn't find the ring to be particularly bad, so the fact that mobile phones ring doesn't seem to explain why bystanders hate mobile-phone conversations.
[L]oudness wasn't the worst problem with mobile phones. In fact, even phone conversations in a normal voice received worse scores than face-to-face conversations. The worst problem seems to be that conversations on mobile phones are more noticeable than face-to-face conversations.
[T]he problem seems to be that people pay more attention when they hear only half a conversation. It's apparently easier to tune out the continuous drone of a complete conversation, in which two people take turns speaking, than it is to ignore a person speaking and falling silent in turns."
Posted by daen at April 13, 2004 05:22 PM