FAQs
DOcurious is the world’s first marketplace of goal-oriented challenges, which are proven to increase a sense of belonging, accomplishment and happiness while at the same time helping people add human skills that will benefit them in all aspects of their lives. The DoCurious roster of challenges has been curated by psychologists and doctors. Learn more.
DOcurious works by connecting people (called Doers) to our challenge providers, each other, and a wide range of interesting people, places, knowledge, skills, and experiences that they might not otherwise encounter. We facilitate communication through our easy-to-use online platform that’s perfect for both DOers and challenge providers.
DOcurious was created to help people expand their horizons and live full, satisfying lives by conquering personal, goal-oriented challenges. DOers experience a sense of accomplishment, boost their feeling of being in control and foster connections with others by engaging in enjoyable and unique challenges. Doers add human skills that will last a lifetime and help them at school, with friendships, at home, in social groups and in careers.
A DOcurious DOer is simply someone that participates in any one of our numerous human challenges. DOers earn badges for success and have fun while adding social and life skills that will help them in all aspects of their lives. DOers can choose categories they are already familiar with to boost knowledge, or choose new categories to expand their horizons or see whether they might like something new.
DOcurious challenges are challenging, real-life, goal-oriented projects. Each one has a specific mission or goal. The idea is to specifically choose goals that are neither too easy nor too difficult to achieve for the skill set of the DOers working to conquer them. We offer challenges in multiple categories to suit a variety of interests and we’re adding more all the time. Our goal is to have challenges in every area of human endeavor, at every difficulty level, in as many geographic locations as possible.
All DOcurious challenges are designed to create a sense of accomplishment, boost feelings of being in control, build happiness, foster connections with others and help learn key problem-solving and communication skills.
DOcurious offers hosted and autonomous challenges. Hosted challenges are provided by independent vendors with the expertise, staff, and facilities to bring challenges to life. Autonomous challenges can be done at home or elsewhere on your own schedule.
DOcurious tackles a problem that’s in the news every day, and it probably happens in your own home: people of all ages across the world are spending too much time on their devices, and it’s taking its toll on their mental health. This trend is impacting everyone but particularly children and students.
DOcurious DOers earn badges for completing specific challenges. The opportunity to earn badges helps motivate DOers and badges become a record of achievement that can be shared with family, friends and social networks. Badges also help improve self-esteem, which in turn builds confidence.
Doug Perednia, MD, is the Founder and CEO of DOcurious. Doug worked for many years on NIH- and HHS-funded projects in telemedicine and other applications of computer science. Since 2017, he has been focused on reversing the adverse impact of screen-based challenges on physical and mental health, with psychology colleagues and advisors Drs. Ken Sheldon, Jean Twenge, and Sonja Lyubomirsky. He’s the author of over a dozen articles and books at the intersection of healthcare, medicine and computing.
DOcurious was founded by Doug Perednia, MD and his team of colleagues and advisors, including professors, experts and authors with experience in positive psychology, clinical psychology, and human connection. The DOcurious team of experts is continuing to grow.
DOcurious goal-oriented enrichment challenges help students learn teamwork, problem solving and critical thinking. Depending on the type of challenge they participate in, students often also have the opportunity to enhance academic skills such as reading, writing, mathematics, speaking and listening, as well as trade or craft skills that can help with future careers. But at the heart of DOcurious is the opportunity to expose students to new challenges that have the potential of revealing hidden talents, new interests and even new passions!
DOcurious challenges help create positive transferable skills for students that enhance the culture and environment of your school, organization and community.
Offering curriculum-based, after school programs and clubs that include DOcurious challenges ensures that children continue to learn and evolve even after traditional school hours.
DOcurious challenges can empower schools and organizations in several important ways beyond simply enhancing children’s life skills. Those include:
Bolstering your brand by enriching your curriculum to encourage enrollment.
Using DOcurious challenges as an anchor for fundraising and friendraising efforts.
Creating a stronger and more positive bond with the community in general, particularly for challenges that help improve engagement with your city or town.
Creating a stronger and more positive bond with the community in general, particularly for challenges that help improve engagement with your city or town.
Creating a stronger and more positive bond with the parents, guardians and PTOs, including as their children gain new skills that apply to school, family dynamics and future careers.
Augmenting current programs or replacing programs (like music, sports and arts) that fell victim to budget cuts.
Using challenges to foster a sense of community and spirit across grades in a given school. Examples include high school seniors completing activities with underclass students, or connecting students of different social strata that might not otherwise interact.
Using challenges to create an enrollment bridge between current students and the next wave of students (such as high schoolers completing challenges with junior high students).
DOers can book and pay for challenges in the DOcurious app. Once booked, they will receive confirmation.
DOcurious challenges are designed to support all ages, from young people to our silver citizens. Our vision is that everyone—regardless of their age, location, or background—can routinely acquire new knowledge and skills, cultivate positive relationships, and master real-life, goal-oriented challenges that give them justifiable, lifelong pride in themselves, their lives, and their accomplishments.
DOcurious challenges are crucial for young people that suffer from digital distractions and overdose. They’ve experienced these their entire lives and so are the least socially-capable generation ever. DOcurious challenges help children gain confidence, improve self-esteem, improve communication skills and increase a sense of belonging. And they help offset the disconnected feeling so many young people experience as a result of being ‘screenagers.'
Yes, DOcurious challenges can help parents/guardians enhance their relationships with their children in two ways. First, children as DOers will become more confident and develop better communication skills, which helps bolster dialogue. Second, parents/guardians and their children can do challenges together, creating a sense of family teamwork, trust and partnership.
There are several ways parents/guardians can help schools and organizations adopt DOcurious challenges. The simplest is to tell schools and organizations about DOcurious. Another way is to create challenges in partnership with a school or organization, or with a local business. A third way is to offer to volunteer to support challenges.
Yes, DOcurious challenges can be sent as gifts. Challenges are a great way to give a gift that’s unique, helpful and memorable.
There is a large population of DOcurious DOers because of the core benefits and variety of challenges and categories offered. DOcurious challenges also offer a chance to build on current interests, discover new ones and overcome the angst and anguish associated with feeling disconnected and too much screen time.
DOcurious DOers are awarded badges for completing tasks. Badges and images are stored in the DoCurious portal in personal scrapbooks that can be shared with other Doers you select. We also encourage Doers to post about their challenges and badges on social media.
DOcurious DOers earn a badge by submitting evidence of completing a task. The DOcurious team reviews those and, when approved, a badge for that task will appear on your profile. Who has access to my DOcurious information and scrapbook?
No one has access to your DOcurious information and scrapbook unless you connect with them on the platform. We also encourage DOers to post about their challenges and badges on social media.
DOcuriouschallenges are designed to empower DOers with new skills and knowledge that will help them today and throughout their lives. Those skills include teamwork, problem solving and critical thinking. DOers can also make new friends and form a community with other DoOers that may become life-long friends. Completing different challenges can also reveal hidden talents that could shape your career or future social challenges.
There are several benefits to becoming a DOcurious challenge provider:
Promote your brand to local people actively looking for fun things to do, and through social media posts of DOers sharing their experiences.
Grow your customer base and revenue as DOers engage with your brand
Drive repeat visits as our goal is to increase your repeat visits by 50% through gamification and the need for buyers to complete different "challenge" levels.
Use DOcurious challenges to gain a competitive advantage as "traditional” challenges transform to goal-oriented challenges scientifically proven to increase happiness and add key life skills.
Support your community and experience the satisfaction of helping your community improve mental well-being.
Challenges can be for one person at a time or an entire group.
DOcurious uses several criteria to evaluate candidate challenges:
Challenges should be developed for specific skill levels (beginner, intermediate, expert, etc.).
Challenges should be goal-oriented and the goals should be aligned to the skill level and be challenging but achievable (i.e., not too easy or too difficult for the skill level).
Challenges should teach DOers something new or advance their existing skills beyond every day challenges. For example, walking is an everyday challenge for many people; a challenge might be walking 3 miles a day every day for a month.
Challenges should include clear expectations on things like time needed, level of effort, tools/materials/workspace needed and degree of difficulty.
Currently only documented businesses or organizations can become DOcurious challenge providers.
If you are an individual with ideas for DOcurious challenges, the best approach is to partner with a local business, school or organization that would benefit from supporting your challenge and have that entity submit the challenges idea. For example, if you’re a runner and would like to create an challenge, you could do so in partnership with a local running group or running store. You can see the types of challenges we offer here.
The costs associated with being a DOcurious challenge provider and who covers those costs can vary. For example, suppose a school becomes a challenge provider for afterschool student enrichment. One option is that the school buys a fixed set of challenge ‘seats’ up front. In that case, school pays (though has the option to request student participants then repay the school). Another option is that while the school arranges the challenge, each student pays DoCurious directly to participate.
The best approach is to contact us directly to align with your specific needs and goals.
First, develop an challenge idea.
Next, write up your idea, keeping in mind what we look for in the best challenges.
Make sure your write-up tells a story: what makes the challenge exciting for you, the creator? Who is the target set of DOers and what is the skill level? What will DOers get or learn from completing the challenge? That could be learning new things, creating something special, helping a community, meeting new people, etc.
Sign up to become a DOcurious challenge provider. There’s a user interface through which you sign up and submit challenge ideas.
If your challenge is approved, we’ll let you know and you’ll see it live on the DOcurious challenges portal.
For more information, contact us.
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