Studibud: The Solution For More Productivity And Social Interaction During A Pandemic

After a year of isolation, social distancing and continuous lockdowns, it’s undeniable that we are all experiencing a deficit in human interaction. For many individuals including myself, our social circles and relationships have been narrowed down. All I know is that I feel particularly lucky to have had a memorable university experience and made friends that I can facetime anytime while being bored at home. However, the graduating class of 2024 find it difficult to build friendships remotely and were robbed of this university life. They have never experienced any of the following: attended a dorm party, spent late nights with roommates, texted peers to save them a seat in the lecture hall while running profusely across campus to arrive on time, planned a study group in the library with close friends only to end up procrastinating and doing just about anything else instead of studying for your upcoming final. 

Lina Botyrius, Mattea Corindia, Louis Hebert, Madison Nelson and Lucas Tomlinson, ambitious business majors from Ryerson University were eager to help first-year students feel like a part of the Ryerson community and make connections when their opportunities to do so were limited. While completing their third year of studies on zoom, it was in their entrepreneurship class that they were encouraged to come up with a creative startup idea and thus “Studibud” was born. 

Studibud is a private platform that allows students to join virtual rooms in which they can work on completing an assignment, studying for an exam while meeting classmates from their university, year or common classes. “Our mission was to bring the social aspect of studying back, we miss the ability to meet up with peers at our student learning centre and just finish school work together” co-founder Botyrius says. 

Replicating the floors of the beautiful Ryerson Student Learning Centre (SLC) in the heart of downtown Toronto, Studibud similarly implements themed rooms, each providing a different level of focus and productivity depending on what the individual desires. They require students to RSVP at least an hour ahead of their preferred time. Some examples of the rooms include: the Quiet Studi room, which provides the most amount of focus, Studi with Music room and Social Studi room which are rooms created solely for chatting and relaxing before exams. 

Still in the prototype stage, Botyrius  and Corindia plan on launching their application in September and are determined to expand beyond the Ryerson community with the hopes of making it available to universities across the GTA. “As we begin to get more traction our plan is to add more themed rooms and set up rooms for students from specific schools to study together if they choose to do so” Corindia claims. 

Make sure to check out their website to learn more about Studibud. If you wanna show these young entrepreneurs some love on their wonderful business venture, make sure to follow them on instagram @studi.bud and their Tiktok: @studibud. Keep an eye out on their socials and website for their next upcoming studio session, you definitely will want to take part in this!

• pandemic
• student
• study