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Who's Who: Cort Johnson
IBM's Cort Johnson is the man with the plan. Johnson and his team of engineers design custom kiosks for clients who don't believe one size fits all.
December 12, 2002
Twenty years ago, Cort Johnson may not have known a plié from a pas de bourrée, but once his daughter Alexandra, now 19, became involved in ballet, he sat front row, center.
The same could be said about his involvement with kiosks. When Johnson, 46, graduated from Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y. in 1978 he never expected his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering to lead him to IBM Global Services as its manager of kiosk national practice or to the Kiosks.org Association's executive committee.
Johnson, based in his native Rochester, N.Y., supervises the company's engineers in Norcross, Ga., and engagement managers all over the country to develop custom kiosk solutions for IBM Global clients.
"If a customer wants a custom design, something that's not off the shelf, my engineers are the ones who do that," said Johnson. "We stay involved from the beginning to the end because we are the national experts within IBM."
From gift registries and airline self-service ticketing kiosks to relocation information kiosks for the U.S. military, Johnson's team develops innovative solutions for clients. Johnson's experience in kiosk design, though, began long before he signed on at IBM in 1997.
Johnson spent two decades at the Eastman Kodak Company, where he received his primer in kiosks helping to create and develop the company's successful PictureMaker.
At Kodak, Johnson co-invented a patented system for placing bar codes on film frames, allowing photographic printers to read them and use the data.
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Cort and Jackie Johnson |
Other projects included disc photography, cameras that used a rotating disc of film; photo index summary cards; large-format photo printers, which could produce 20,000 prints per hour; and the first Kodak photo kiosks, introduced to the public in 1995.
"I was responsible for a lot of kiosk projects as a product line manager," Johnson said. "With the kiosks we were able to deliver photos in five minutes and you just couldn't do that before. It's really exciting that you're able to expand what a consumer can get."
The readers of Photo Trade Newsmagazine voted Kodak's PictureMaker kiosk as the "Top Product of the Year" in December of 1998. The award-winning kiosk could remove red-eye, do color corrections and featured zoom and cropping tools. Today there are more than 35,000 operating around the world.
The customer is king
Johnson said the best part of his job is working with clients.
"I think it's really working with the customer," Johnson said. "I really enjoy working with them to define what their problems are and how to solve them by implementing kiosks."
Bill Ferenchak, a longtime friend of Johnson's and retired engineering manager for Kodak, said that Johnson has a way with people.
"He's just a lot of fun," Ferenchak said. "He has a real good outlook in life and is always in a good mood."
Ferenchak said Johnson never gives up. On one of their frequent golf outings it began to hail, but Johnson continued playing, Ferenchak said.
Self-described as an organized yet creative person, Johnson said he loves exploring new kiosk ideas.
Elaine Bresnick, vice president of sales and marketing for Swecoin U.S., has worked with Johnson's team on many kiosk projects.
"My impression of him is that he is one of the industry experts," Bresnick said. "I was very impressed with Cort's input at the recent (Kiosks.org Association) meeting in Atlanta. He's just an expert because he has been doing this for so many years."
Swecoin, with its U.S. headquarters in Rhode Island, makes thermal printers for some of IBM's kiosks.
"Global services, because they work in the custom and consulting area, will work with any IBM customer and they are the most knowledgeable in the industry," Bresnick said.
Name: Cort Johnson Title: Manager, Kiosk National Practice |
"In the self-service field, I think Cort is very inquisitive and investigative," said Keefner. "When there's new things going on Cort always knows about them, he's always in the loop."
Johnson said he and his team average about 10 kiosk projects a year, with each one requiring at least three to six months to complete.
Recent projects include several photo kiosks; a health-tracking kiosk, which measures heart rate, blood pressure and weight; and a kiosk that will be placed on military bases to help military personnel locate real-estate agents, doctors, apartments or other relocation needs.
Johnson said IBM's client list includes US Airways, United Airlines and Southwest Airlines, Fujifilm and Military Moves.
Each project comes with its own complications or design needs, and he said flexibility is the key to his success.
One recent project called for a kiosk used in casinos.
"A lot of the people in casinos are age 65 or older," Johnson said. "We tried to design a self-service kiosk to meet the needs of older people. That's a challenge, but we've been successful."
The casino kiosks feature larger text and graphic step-by-step directions.
"The key is simplicity," Johnson said. "People like to look at pictures and understand what they need to do based on pictures."
Successful recipe
During his career, Johnson has developed his own three-fold recipe for a successful kiosk design.
He believes these ingredients, combined with state-of-the-art technology, are essential.
" First, it must add value to whoever is using it," Johnson said. "The customer will have an idea of what they want and pilots will be run, but in the end you have to make sure the kiosks deliver," Johnson said.
Second, the kiosk must be dependable. If it's not up and running 99 percent of the time, Johnson said, users won't bother to try to use it again.
His third demand of a well-designed kiosk is that it must tie into the client's marketing plans and the consumer must be attracted to it.
"We frequently find the consumers will walk by a kiosk because they don't know what it's for," Johnson said. "In some cases, someone has to take the consumer over to the kiosk and show them how to use it. We work with our clients to make sure they understand that."
Billy Giaimo, the former kiosk national practice leader for IBM Global Solutions, said Johnson has a gift for helping clients get a fast return on investment (ROI). Giaimo is now the America's group focal point for Wireless e-business.
"Cort has the broadest cross-industry kiosk perspective of anybody in the industry," Giaimo said. "Not only from the tech standpoint, he also understands that ROI for the organization doing the deployment is all that matters."
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