So, why are public cell phone conversations so annoying?
Jakob Nielsen provides the results of a study by Andrew Monk and colleagues from the University of York that tries to determine why public cell phone conversations seem so much more annoying to bystanders than those of two people engaged in a face-to-face conversation.
Turns out, ring tones are less annoying that one might think, increased volume of those talking on a cell phone has some bearing, but the main hypothesis (and it’s just a hypothesis, as the research does not seem to be there yet to support it) is that only being able to hear one side of a cell phone conversation may be the most annoying of all.
