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This article is about research that was done by a group from the University of York on why mobile phones are annoying. To perform this research, actors would go into public places and have conversations, either face to face or talking on the phone. They would then ask the unsuspecting bystanders around them to fill out a survey about the conversation that just took place. The question came up about whether or not there is anything wrong with using a bystander without their consent. Jakob Nielsen doesn't see anything wrong with this study because if you recieve the users consent first you no longer know how they would really feel about the matter in real life, and I agree with him. Besides the fact that the user is not being harmed in any way and this is a daily event that happens to everybody.
On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the most favorable, they asked the people how annoying the conversations were. The mobile phone conversations were rated an average of 2.8 with the face to face conversations at an average of 1.6. They also rated the tolerance level of the loudness of the voice of the person talking. Loud conversations rated 2.7 and normal conversations rated 1.7. It is obvious that mobile phone conversations and loud conversations are more annoying. The loudness speaks for itself, but one might ask why mobile phone conversations are more annoying then face to face conversations, because face to face conversations have twice the audio content. The research was not concluded with an answer to this question but it seems to be that perhaps mobile phone conversations are more annoying because only half of the conversation is heard. If a person is hearing a two way conversation they might not think much of it, but when hearing only half of the conversation, it is very jagged and seems to be that the person is saying random things, not making much sense.
In the end Jakob Nielsen said that this research is helpful in two ways. first it pioneers the study of bystander usability. He said that this helps us understand that we need to not only test the direct users, but any person that it might effect. Second it is a great example of field research. He said that testing users in a natural setting with actors is a little strange, but that it might become more needed in the future.