Abstract

Information system is an essential aspect of any organization which help with the dissemination and retrieval of information among staff members. Most organizations experience ineffective information management due to the use of ageing information processing methods and poor staff management. There has been an improvement with the adoption of conventional pigeonholes as message boxes allocated to each member to track staff incoming and outgoing mails. In this approach, organizations are still confronted with untimely acknowledgement of incoming mails, delivery and feedback. This paper proposes a mobile pigeonhole alert system with the use of a sensor device to send an alert to the intended pigeonhole users notifying them of the arrival of a message. Hardware and Software implementations were carried out using JAVA programming language to program a sensor, hardcoded on a micro-controller. To assess the effectiveness of the system, an online survey was carried out to elicit information from two hundred (200) pigeonhole users (lecturers) in a tertiary institution about their perceptions of the system usability and performance. The data collected were analyzed using SPSS software for correlation and regression analysis between the usability and system performance. Experimental results showed that system performed as expected based on users’ satisfaction, realization of system objectives and the significant values obtained from statistical analysis. Comparative analysis of the system also showed an improvement on other existing works. 

Keywords

pigeonhole, alert system, information exchange, messages, communication, sensor device