Just in time for final exams, a pair of University of South Florida sophomore engineering students have come up with an app that allows people to match with the ideal study partner -- think "Tinder for study groups."
Like the dating app Tinder, Stuby -- short for "study buddy" -- allows users to swipe left for no and right for yes.
But in Stuby's case, people get matched up by a set of criteria, rather than by location, which is what Tinder first looks at.
"(Stuby) prioritizes pretty much the people that you would study best with, based on your strengths and weaknesses, your major and minor, your year in college, in addition to what courses you're taking," computer science major Chad Townsend said. "Stuby will prioritize who's the best person you can match with and you'll see them first."
Townsend's fraternity brother, industrial engineering major William Rondon, came up with the idea for Stuby after many nights studying on his own in the USF Library.
"I was always in the library until like 1 or 2 in the morning studying, and I was always alone, I didn't really have any of my friends to study with me," Rondon said. "So I always wished there was an app that could connect students with other students at any time."
Over the summer, Rondon came up with a business plan, researched the idea and spoke to other developers, and finally came up with a rough prototype he brought to Townsend. The two created an app that is currently undergoing beta testing.
"We're releasing it to friends, all the people we've met along the way along with different students in different majors," Rondon said. "Right now, it's about getting about 200 or less downloads and seeing what people like so we can add different features or change different features."
If things go according to plan, Stuby would then be rolled out in the fall, not just to the USF community, but to students at the University of Tampa, Hillsborough Community College and University of Central Florida as well.
"That's what a lot of our app focuses on, because a lot of these satellite campuses lose a lot of the connectivity that a main campus offers, so we're hoping our app can really bridge that connection issue and really bring more students together," Townsend said.
