Case Study: IMS TILES

Investigative interviewing planning tool

Any development team appreciates a software owner who considers useful ideas brought by them to improve the future product. IMS TILES - a tool that makes police interviewing efficient and productive - is the perfect case. The product had not been fully shaped when the Client contacted us. We had the target audience - law enforcements and private detectives of Australia and Great Britain. We had the specifics of investigators' work. But it was unclear whether it would be a mobile app or a website, and what platforms and devices should be covered.

After fruitful discussions, the decision was to make a single page web application. The product had to work great on desktop browsers, as well as on mobile browsers of iOS and Android tablets. Our task was going from sketches to the ready deployed product.

The main two target audience categories were police investigators and private detectives (30-60 years old) and police academy students (20-25 years old). The app's basic feature set would be provided free of charge, while the full feature set would be available as monthly subscription via PayPal.

• Secure login to access interviews.

• Creating and planning an interview. Dividing an interview into stages.

• Attaching additional materials to discussion topics.

• Creating a Timeline and placing events on it.

• Pinning places on the map.

• Timing for start, pause, and end of an interview.

• Hyperlinking digital content to individual TILES.

• Synchronizing interview data.

• Sharing and remote collaboration on interviews.

• Logging each action during an interview for further generation of a summarizing PDF report.

• Customization of TILE categories.

• PhoneGap

• RAD.js

• HTML5

• CSS3

• JavaScript

• ASP.NET MVC Web API

• Complex gestures: scroll/hold/drag-and-drop

• Customization of Google Maps

• Extended work with Microsoft Azure: traffic manager

• Multilevel implementation of the security mechanism (SSL, IP binding)

• The backend was developed by our team; it manages the major bulk of the website logic.

Supported platforms and browsers: Windows 8.1, Firefox 31+, Chrome 31+, IE11, Mac OS 10.10, Safari 6.1+, iOS 8.0+, Safari 7.1+, Android 4.0+, and Chrome for Android 37.

As a result, we created a solid, flexible, and secure system that eliminates much paperwork and saves plenty of time of end users. Another thing worth mentioning that was really a helper, was the patient, persistent, result-oriented attitude of the Client, with a wish to understand and aid the process.

As for purely technical subtleties, there were non-trivial tasks of sharing links, which is generally hard in a single page application, plugging in a complex SSL certificate, and creating an effective Gantt chart with infinite lists. The system's structure corresponds with the theory of conversation management and allows the most efficient work before, during, and after the interview. This solution is absolutely unique to the market and has no known competitors.