April 2, 2025
The students at the School of Computing and Information (SCI) are constantly pushing the boundaries of innovation, using technology to transform the way we live, work, and connect. Take Aidan Dougherty (SCI ’25), who recently created and launched a crowd-sourcing app designed exclusively for University of Pittsburgh students. According to Dougherty, this app harnesses the power of technology to bridge gaps, save time, and enhance the overall student experience, ensuring that everything from coordinating events to finding study groups becomes second nature.
What is Skedaddle?
Skedaddle is a communication and crowd-sourcing app that allows Pitt students to chat with each other in real-time, report how busy on-campus buildings are, and discover events as they’re happening in order to connect with other students. Whether you’re looking for a secluded study spot (especially during finals week), a social sphere to play cards, or just want to chat with other students, Skedaddle has you covered.
“Having students take less than a minute out of their day to report how busy a building is will make the college experience better,” said Dougherty. “By crowdsourcing real-time campus activity, Skedaddle ensures that students can find the perfect spot to study, socialize, or simply connect with their peers.”
Meet the Creator
With a passion for problem solving and back-end development, senior computer science major Aidan Dougherty created Skedaddle to address the needs of his fellow students. Inspired by his own experiences and a desire to improve campus life, he has built an app that is both practical and innovative.
While no single class taught him how to build the app, Dougherty said his experience at Pitt has helped him refine his coding skills, optimize performance, and deepen his understanding of networks and operating systems. Classes like Operating Systems, Networks, Compilers, and Databases, played a crucial role in shaping his technical expertise. A particular professor who provided Dougherty with invaluable advice was Cloud Computing Professor Daniel Mahoney, who helped him navigate challenges like handling mass amounts of messages.
“There wasn’t one class that taught me how to do this. Computer science is, mostly, studying the theory of how software works with few project-based classes. But Pitt helped me write better code,” said Dougherty.
Behind the Scenes: Building Skedaddle
Skedaddle was built using Flutter and Dart for the app, ensuring a smooth experience across devices. The server is written in Go, with message processing handled by Apache Kafka. Dougherty created the app independently, driven by a passion for solving everyday problems faced by students.
Dougherty attributes his skills to years of hands-on programming, reverse-engineering websites, and working on independent projects that taught him essential concepts such as networks and TCP servers, databases, RESTful APIs, client-server relationships, and front-end development. His ability to experiment without fear of failure has been key to his success.
Building Skedaddle in under a year meant making some tough decisions regarding architecture and implementation, but Dougherty was able to avoid major logistical issues thanks to his past experience with similar projects. One of the more amusing challenges he encountered was realizing that certain data types, when encoded into binary, have different endianness—something he hadn’t considered before. However, the biggest hurdle has been authentication.
Moreover, bypassing university email filters proved to be a frustrating process, making it difficult to convert downloads into active users. To address this, he recently introduced an option to authenticate using Pitt ID, which has significantly improved the user experience.
What’s next for Skedaddle?
While the app is currently focused on serving Pitt students, there are plans to expand to other universities in the future. Dougherty is also exploring ways to monetize the app in a student-friendly way, such as promoting small businesses instead of using intrusive ads.
“My current plan is to keep polishing Skedaddle over iterations and build it into a business,” Dougherty said.
Currently, Skedaddle is available for iOS and MacOS. Android support is in the works and will be coming soon! For more information, visit the Skedaddle website.