The Kelvin Consultants
Company overview
Established in 1986 Kelvin have been providing incident investigation services and training around the world for over 20 years. The company's primary product, Kelvin TOP-SET, is an internationally acclaimed incident investigation and problem solving methodology used by blue chip companies around the world.
As early adopters of enabling technologies Kelvin's policy is to always use the right tool for the job. Kelvin believe that the launch of the iPod Touch and iPhone mark a coming of age for mobile devices.
Feasibility Study
The main objective of Kelvin's feasibility study was to establish the viability of the Apple iPod Touch and 
Apple iPhone as 'in the field' alternatives to the traditional Kelvin TOP-SET toolkit.
Kelvin's business is incident investigation and management but incidents rarely happen in convenient locations and many of Kelvin's staff and clients regularly find themselves dealing with incidents in remote and often hostile environments. It is this that triggered Kelvin's interest in mobile technologies.
The deliverables of the feasibility study were as follows:
- A report exploring the merits of the different file formats, content readers and the pro's and cons of iPod versus Windows alternatives
- A set of sample content converted to the proposed file formats
- The sample content transferred to the iPod
- The sample content demonstrable on the iPod
- A working proof of concept of the proposed publishing flow for the content
The outcome
Early investigations indicated that the iPod was a powerful platform and in terms of user experience and screen size there were no Windows mobile devices that could compete. This being the case both The Kelvin Consultants and The Scottish Centre for Enabling Technologies agreed that the most pragmatic way forward was to develop a proof of concept that tested the validity of Apple's claims regarding the capabilities of the iPod.
The proof of concept solution developed not only met, but far exceeded the deliverables of the feasibility study and provided a prototype suitable for piloting with a select group of clients. This prototype while not up to production standards can automatically connect to a secure web server to download content updates as they become available and not only view the content, including video, but search and annotate the content as well. Unlike typical proof of concept solutions tight adherence to Apple's human computer interaction (HCI) guidelines ensure that while still a proof of concept the high quality of the user experience extolled by Apple was maintained.
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