DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF MOBILE APPS FOR FINDING AND TRACKING LOST ITEMS IN ESUI

The problem of lost items in academic environments is a pervasive issue that affects both students and staff, leading to frustration, wasted time and financial losses. Traditional methods of finding lost items, such as manual reporting and physical searches are often inefficient and unreliable, resulting in low recovery rates. This study seeks to addresss the above problems by proposing the deployment of a mobile application to track lost items at Edo State University. Utilizing Agile Methodology, the system was developed iteratively with support from Use Case Models, Dataflow Diagrams, UML and Activity Diagrams to design robust and functional application. Data gathering employed a triangulation approach to enhance accuracy and reliability. The application utilized Flutter 3.13 with Dart 3.1, with Firebase serving as the backend-as-a-service (BaaS) platform and PostgreSQL managing the backend database. Evaluation through unit and integration testing as well as feedback from a student test group suggests the application is effective and holds promise for practical deployment in the future time.