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September 30, 1999

New Devices Given Road Test by Business Students at Duke

By LISA GUERNSEY

URHAM, N.C. -- James H. Sherrill sat in an oversize chair in a dimly lighted lounge, cradling a rectangular electronic device that was unlike anything he had seen. It was smaller than a laptop and bigger than a palmtop. It didn't have cables or a keyboard.

	Jenny Warburg for The New York Times
	PREVIEWING THE NEXT GENERATION - Nevin Fouts, fourth from left, associate dean for information technology, with others in a project at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business that tests innovative electronic devices in actual classroom use.

But in his first few minutes with the device, Sherrill, a first-year student at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, was already becoming adept at using its stylus to open files and applications. "It has an infrared link here for a wireless connection," he said, pointing to the tiny port on its side during a demonstration.

The device -- called a Stylistic LT, by Fujitsu -- will be part of Sherrill's life over the next few months.

It is one of many new gadgets that he and other students will be testing in an unusual project started by the business school this semester.

The project is like an oversize focus group in which students are both evaluators of new technology and research subjects in a huge marketing experiment. The students are invited to test what Nevin Fouts, associate dean for information technology, calls "next-generation devices" that he thinks might replace laptops for use in classrooms, libraries and study lounges. "The market hasn't even emerged enough to give them a certain name," Fouts said.

Nine companies are participating in the project, sending their latest gadgets to the business school for testing. More than 100 devices have arrived and await distribution. Fouts expects to receive another 100 in the next few months. All told, the equipment is worth more than $1 million.

All the devices are portable, cordless and lightweight -- attributes that Fouts considers ideal for students on the move. Many of the devices look like the electronic equivalent of the stone tablet, with liquid-crystal displays encased in heavy-duty plastic frames. They typically include some of the same features that people find on desktop computers, like the ability to browse the Web or retrieve e-mail. Many also include styluses for note-taking; some include speakers, microphones and digital cameras.

People who follow the handheld-computer business may already have seen a few of the devices, which have been on display recently at computer trade shows.Others exist only as prototypes.

The Duke project poses risks for the university, which is hoping that the experiments will not be a distraction. It is also risky for the companies, which in some cases are opening their research and development secrets to an unpredictable student audience. But the companies are willing to take the risks in exchange for a relationship with business school students who, once they graduate to the corporate world, may have the money to become frequent customers and the influence to sway market trends.

A marketing experiment has risks for a university and the producers of cutting-edge technology.

"We're seeing the cutting edge," said Christopher T. Cocks, a second-year student. "You could even say we're helping to define what the cutting edge will be."

Cocks and Sherrill, the student with the Fujitsu tablet, are among 12 members of the Technology Advisory Council, a group of students recruited by Fouts to help guide technology-related decisions at the business school.

Each council member will have access to every gadget under evaluation. In many cases, they will be expected to keep the devices for several weeks, using them for notes, e-mail and research, and to trade documents. They will be required to write journal entries about how easy or unbearable the devices are to use. They will also test them in controlled environments like a soundproof laboratory typically used for market-research experiments.

Council members will also be asked to sign nondisclosure agreements, legal documents in which they pledge not to give away the companies' trade secrets or try to create their own companies based on knowledge of the devices.

Any graduate school student may participate in the project, and all who use prototype devices will be asked to sign agreements. Keeping things under wraps is essential to the project's success, those involved say.

Aqcess Technologies, for example, will be lending Duke more than 80 copies of Qbe, its first device o go on the market. It also plans to test the latest Qbe (pronounced cube) iterations using Duke students, if they sign nondisclosure agreements.

"In this industry, it can get hectic and cutthroat," said Kain K. Johnson, vice president for sales and marketing at Aqcess Technologies. "Before we give anything to anyone out there, we're going to make sure we're covered."

The Fuqua project will be formally announced this week, but the ideas behind it have been percolating for years. It started, Fouts said, when he and faculty members began to bemoan the drawbacks of students' use of laptops in the classroom. While some business schools require students to have notebook computers for use in class, Duke discourages them.

"With the laptop screen up, you have a barrier between faculty and students," said Joel Huber, associate dean of the M.B.A. program. The constant clicking is annoying, too, he said. And students have been known to surf the Web or send e-mail in class.

Dr. Huber, Fouts and several professors talked wishfully about a different kind of digital device that could connect wirelessly to a network yet did not require a keyboard, something that might allow students to beam documents between machines.

"We conceived of a class of device that didn't exist yet," Fouts said.

But over the past year, Fouts began talking to technology companies about the idea and discovered that some of them were, in fact, being realized.

Some were just about to hit the market, like the Stylistic LT, which now sells for $3,265. Others that will be released this fall include the QBE and the Qubit, by Qubit Technology in Denver. Fouts negotiated agreements with the nine companies, which also include Arthur Andersen, Dauphin Technology, International Business Machines, the IPDN Corporation, Laser Image Corporate Publishing and Nortel Networks.

The companies, too, signed nondisclosure agreements with Duke, because the school's researchers are using the students as subjects as well. The way students react to the devices will be analyzed as part of a research project by Steve Hoeffler, a doctoral student who is leading the pilot program.

The notion of an entire business school as a technology test bed is intriguing to some experts in market research. "I think it's an incredibly interesting approach," said Jens Schlueter, vice president for marketing and research at Informative, a company that helps Web-based companies conduct market research. The big difference between Fuqua's experiments and typical focus group projects, he said, is that the business-school students will be exploring the limitations of the devices over weeks and months, rather than hours or days.

But Schlueter questions whether the companies will be getting an accurate picture of how their devices are received, given that the students who choose to be involved may be more enthusiastic about technology than those who don't.

Hoeffler said he was well aware of such limitations. "We are already starting with a pretty biased sample," he said, since business school students are typically knowledgeable about technology.

Some academics question the wisdom of Duke's embracing the role of beta tester. The potential for students to be overly focused on the devices worries Rob Kling, a professor of information science at Indiana University. A dean might be concerned about complaints from professors about laptops, Kling said, but "doubtless he'll still be hearing complaints from faculty who have students in classes who are distracted by their new gadgets."

Huber teaches a course called The Marketing of High Technology. The devices, he said, would be perfect for his course and could help him interact with students in the classroom.

But he also said he would watch carefully for any signs that the devices are hindering learning. "We'll also have paper there," he added, "if we need to regroup."

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