1. GROUP MEMBERS MOBILE ENHANCED ONLINE AUCTIONING SYSTEM ( CASE STUDY DODOMA ) S/N o NAME OF STUDENTSEX REGISTRATION NUMBER DEGREE PROGRA M YEAR OF STUDY E-MAIL 1. SHEGHEMBE, BAKARI S. MT/UDOM/2010/00149BSc. BIS3 RD YEARsheghembebakari@yahoo.com 2. NAHUMU SALEHEMT/UDOM/2010/00146BSc. BIS3 RD YEARnahumusalehe@yahoo.com 3. MWAIBALE, NSAJIGWA MT/UDOM/2010/00144BSc. BIS3 RD YEARnsajigwamwaibale@yahoo.com 4. GWANKO, ZAMDAFT/UDOM/2010/00131BSc. BIS3 RD YEARzamdagwanko@yahoo.com

2. PROBLEM STATEMENT 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.. Details of the products to be auctioned are stored in either file cabinets or Excel worksheets before an auction starts.

3. CONT… 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. Using Dodoma as our case study, we have discovered the following draw backs which are found in the traditional means of auctioning. The existence of middle men in daily transactions has led to an increase of the original cost. Shortage of market space is experienced mostly by those individuals who are not business professional but they wish to sell their possessions. Unfair pricing is another problem faced by these people who want to sell their properties. Due to the lack of market space, people are forced to sell their possessions at an unreasonable price.

4. CONT… Lack of exposure; the buyers have a very narrow range of choices of items. Time consuming; because people have to move physically to the auctioning place, also auctioneers spend a lot of time to record and retrieve data from their file cabinets. Therefore these limitations discourage the prospective buyers from participating in auctions. The aim of this project is to develop an information system, the Mobile Enhanced Online Auctioning System (MEOAS), which will remove the workload of maintaining data and make the whole auction process more dynamic so that anyone interested in participating in auctions will not be required to be present at the auction office at the time of auction. MEOAS will change the auction process to a web based system. Customers will be able to participate in auctions online without travelling to the office either through the use of their phones or computers. Auctions payments will also be made online using mobile phones such as M-PESA, TIGO-PESA, EAZYPESA AND AIRTEL MONEY.

5. OBJECTIVES GENERAL OBJECTIVES: Providing an online market space/platform to both auctioneers and bidders (buyers) whether individuals, institutions or organizations to sell and buy properties. SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES: To develop a system which will provide a market space/ platform where through mobile phones and website, users can display their products for auction. Providing direct interaction between seller and buyer by removing intermediaries/middlemen. Provide a space of online advertisement to business companies. To reduce the workload of maintaining data through file cabinets and excel sheets, since the data will be stored in our online databases.

6. SCOPE OF THE PROJECT The system will be developed to enable Dodoma users to post and bid their products online regardless they are business professionals or not.

7. METHODOLOGY DESIGN Design phase will provide 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, and a procedural design.

8. METHODOLOGY CONT…  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.

9. METHODOLOGY CONT…  DATABASE DESIGN MEOAS will store its information in MySQL Database. This is because MySQL has the following advantages; It is open source software thus it is cost free. High performance and reliability It is flexible hence can run in more than 20 platforms including LINUX, Windows, MarcOS, Solaris and IBM AIX Auctioning items will be categorized into motor vehicles, real estates, electrical appliances, computers and computer related devices, and User’s information will be stored in database objects which are tables. These tables will act as entities of a system and will be linked to each other with keys to make relationship. The MEOAS will allow real time bidding by allowing storage and retrieval of information which are generated and stored in database.

10. METHODOLOGY CONT…  PROCEDURAL DESIGN The designing of MEOAS will ensure that the system is safeguarded by having the following features; Users can only access the system if and only if they are registered in the system either through mobile phones or online in our website and can login using username and password. MEOAS will be flexible and scalable enough to tolerate changes and accommodate more users. Bidders who will be bidding will be able to view existing bidding that is currently taking place. Thus will encourage raising their bids since they will know by how much are their fellow bidders willing to pay.

11. METHODOLOGY CONT… ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

12. METHODOLOGY CONT… IMPLEMENTATION The system will be developed by using the following tools:- Windows Operating System. XAMP server. KANNEL gateway MySQL database Editor such as Macromedia Dreamweaver, Net Beans or Notepad, Notepad++ The system will be developed by using PHP and XAMP server. In order to allow mobile communication we will be using KANNEL gateway which provides WAPBOX, BEARER BOX and SMS BOX.

13. METHODOLOGY CONT… TESTING Through all phases in the development of system, verification and validation (V&V) procedures will be applied at the end of each stage. Verification attempts to find errors by executing a program in tested or simulated environment while validation will be processed of finding errors by executing program in the real environment. This phase will involve all types of testing i.e. unit testing, integration testing and system testing. EVALUATION The System will be evaluated according to its functionality, support, maintenance, performance, scalability, usability, security and customizability.

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16. CONCLUSION EXPECTED OUTPUTS:  Creation of a market space that will be user friendly and that will enable different people from different occupations being business professionals or not, to buy and sell their products online.  The system will be unbiased since it will not only allow the auctioning of big properties like real estates, motor vehicles etc. but also the auctioning of small items like used mobile phones, laptops, furniture etc.  MEOAS will represent 24 hours availability seven days a week, instant satisfaction and interactivity. This interactivity will allow the customers more control over price and product customization. As a result of these benefits, the number of online auction purchaser is expected to increase, according to the investigation that we have done on our existing auctioning companies in Dodoma.