28-05-2013, 04:55 PM
MOBILE ENHANCED ONLINE AUCTIONING SYSTEM
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INTRODUCTION
OVERVIEW
Information technology has improved the life of human beings and has made the lives easier by various kinds of application. Due to the rapid changes with the use of IT, there are many tools which have been produced and invented. The Mobile Enhanced Online Auctioning System (MEOAS) is a system whose main goal is to provide online marketing space and platform to both auctioneers and bidders whether individuals, institutions or organizations in order to provide easy way for buying and selling products over the web through mobile enhanced technologies in Dodoma region. Any person can register in the website either by using computers or mobile phones. And after that is allowed to present his/her products for auction, to add bids, to manage user account, to resell unsold products. Unregistered person may only see common pages with all products and seller's information plus advertisements. The project will allow the process of entering details of auctioneer and bidder, entering details of product to be put into auction, bidding, transactions and payments. The auctioneer can enter the details of his own product for auction and the bidder can select the product from the list and make the auction. The auctioneer and bidder can see the details of the item. The auctioneer can also take part in the auction of other products. But an auctioneer can’t bid for his own product. Also the bidder can put products for auction i.e. the auctioneer may act also as a bidder and that the bidder can also act as an auctioneer. This will be a highly user-friendly web enabled application which can be used over any popular browsers available in the market and it will also allow mobile enhanced technologies which can be used with any mobile phone without even the need for the phone to have internet access. The bidder who bid the maximum amount for the product within the particular time limit assigned by the auctioneer will be the winner of the auction.
PROBLEM STATEMENT AND JUSTIFICATION
In Tanzania the auction is done by many registered companies. These companies are selling properties coming from individuals, institutions, and organizations. Auction companies like Majembe Auction Mart, Kondoa Auction Mart, Yono Auction Mart, Mwidunda Auction Mart and Mchinga Auction Mart are doing auction in public places. The process of auction is done by first conducting public announcement using cars, magazines, radio stations example Radio Mwangaza, TV stations like Dodoma Cable TV etc. After announcement anyone interested to participate in auction has to visit the office where the auction is being held. A participant does not need to register himself before participating in an auction. Details of the products to be auctioned are stored in either file cabinets or Excel worksheets before an auction starts. The auctioneers need to first search product details stored in Excel Worksheets or file cabinets to finalize lowest bidding price and number of products to be auctioned. And also the bid details are stored in Excel Worksheets or file cabinet. Using Dodoma as our case study, we have discovered the following draw backs which are found in the traditional means of auctioning.
ANALYSIS
In this phase the system requirements will be studied and structured, based on cost and human effort. We will study current existing auctioning companies like Majembe Auction Mart, Yono Auction Mart, Kondoa Auction Mart, Mwidunda Auction Mart etc. Then we will see how they are doing auctions, when they receive property to sell, what process they follow until they sell. All of this information will be gathered by using Interviews, Questionnaires and Observation methods.
FEASIBILITY STUDY
Feasibility analysis will be done by investigating the existing auction systems in the area under investigation or generally ideas about a new system. It will be a test of a system proposal according to its workability, impact on the society and ability to meet user needs. Three key considerations which will be involved in the feasibility analysis are economic, technical and cultural.
Economic feasibility
Economic analysis (cost/benefit analysis) will be used for evaluating the effectiveness of a candidate system (MEOAS), where by the procedure to determine the benefits and savings that are expected from this Mobile Enhanced Online Auctioning System (MEOAS) will be carried out. Also project development costs and operational costs after project will be estimated and financial benefits based on annual savings and increased revenues will be estimated too.
DESIGN
Design phase provides the understanding and the procedural details necessary for implementing the system recommended in the feasibility study. This phase will include user interface design, database design, architectural design, and a procedural design.
USER INTERFACE DESIGN
Interface of MEOAS will be just like any other website but designed to fulfill the needs of users by matching with their skills, experience and expectations of a typical auction while ensuring all the functional requirements are met. The interface will be designed to ensure that users find it very interactive and easy to access which make them enjoy using the site, since it will have well conserved colors, presence of pull-down menus (which have categorized the items for auction), visible buttons, help link, other well organized links and message boxes (alerts) that have good feedback in case of error occurrence, the interface will also provide mechanism to allow users to recover from mistakes they do such as Undo function to reverse the action.