AnkiDroid: Open Source Development in Android

Abstract

The project at hand revolves around a variety of main topics: agile development, open-source, Android and SRS software (SRS stands for Spaced Repetition Soft- ware, and it is based in the spaced effect phenomenon discovered in cognitive psychology). Combining all these topics, the project will describe and document the work that has been done defining and implanting a development process for Android applications, from taking requirements to releasing the final application to the Android Market. All of this, using Scrum like agile methodology for personal organization and working side by side in an open-source environment, that has been created from the ground. The project will also explain briefly then, the characteristics and philosophies behind agile development in general, and Scrum in particular. The point where all the topics mentioned before converge is in the practical ex- ample that was used for the project: AnkiDroid. AnkiDroid is the Android version of Anki, an SRS software multi-platform (Mac OS, Linux, Windows...), open-source and free that, at the time of beginning the project, still did not have an Android version. In brief, the main goal of both Anki and AnkiDroid is to make the study for long term memorization of any subject as efficient as possible, minimizing the number of times the information has to be seen and the time spent reviewing, while maximizing the retention of the material. All of this is achieved with an implementation of an SRS algorithm.