Viola Krebs (as part of her Masters research) did an online survey of BOINC users a few months back. She's in the process of writing a paper on the results. She sent me a summary of specific suggestions made by respondents, which I include below. Some of these suggestions relate to BOINC itself; others are for projects.
Many of these are things we're already aware of (make the software simpler, projects should provide more news, etc.) or have already done (e.g., account managers exist). But there are a few new things. Comments welcome - which of these do you think are most important? -- David ---------------------------- 1. Software and Interface Improvements User-friendly: Improve software in such a way that it is easier to install, configure and use, with a more user-friendly interface, usable by “ordinary” users. Compatible: Make the software platform independent and compatible with any operating system (OS), as well as different video cards. Work units: Provide work units that can adapt depending on the size of the machine. Smaller packets should be provided as an option in order to enable faster completion of individual tasks. Stability: Improve stability although it is not too bad! Adapt to the computer: Make sure that the computer is not slowed down because of too much RAM usage (automatic leveling of the amount of processing power used depending on the processor's capacity and temperature (especially important for notebook computers). Automatic updates: Enable BOINC to automatically update; non-proficient users never check for newer versions. One account, multiple projects: Provide one account that gives the user the option to run as many projects as he would like (selection of projects from a list), rather than individual accounts for each project. Multiprocessing: BOINC should handle multiprocessing. 2. Hardware Improvements Encourage research: Encourage research around hardware to resolve issues related to it (e.g. graphics card and processing unit compatibility, cooling system, etc.). Server: Improve the capacity of the servers running BOINC applications. Collaborations with hardware manufacturers: Convince manufacturers of processors (e.g. Intel, AMD) and notebooks to design proper cooling systems that actually work. 3. Other Technical Suggestions Improved infrastructure: Procure more funding for the infrastructure of the systems. s...@home, for example, seems to be maxing out its bandwidth, causing delays in downloading new work units and uploading completed ones. Placeholder: Create placeholders for stopped programs, so that users can pick up where they left off. CPU power donation control: Provide more control over how the computer is being used in order to not run the CPU over a certain temperature. Give the option to provide 50% rather than 100%. Credit policy: Put in place “credit-police” to make sure that no project is grabbing the power from the others by granting too high credits. No small updates: Stop small upgrades that are buggy and do not seem to improve anything. Inform about the difference between the old and new version. Improved user platform: Create an improved end-customer platform (graphics, options). Screen savers: Provide screen savers for each of the projects. Better sharing of participants: Better sharing of participant computers between the projects. If a project can use video cards to speed things up, use only compatible computers for these projects. GPU computation suspension: GPU computation should be suspended when a game is started, many people would just uninstall BOINC if it impairs their computer usage. Interaction with client and server: If I am downloading an 18 MB database file, why not keep that file on the hard-drive and keep accessing it, instead of re-downloading the whole thing. Linking: Link the projects with the users through the manager right away instead of having them go through all the separate sections and sites. Efficiency vs. reliability: When a project such as climate Prediction takes thousands of hours to complete I get a little nervous that it won't be able to upload and I will have wasted all that computing. Gambling days or even weeks of computing is less scary than gambling months of computing. 4. Overview and Statistics Status report: Update a centralized status report website from all projects, which should include not just statistics but also progress reports for individual projects. More graphics: Better integration of statistics into the BOINC client. 5. Training and Education Importance of education: Education is also critical, especially with so many people paranoid of viruses and so many more that have never heard of this kind of project. 6. More information about what is going on behind the scenes More news: I want more news of what’s going on behind the scenes and what the results have produced in a format that’s understandable for the layman. Info about remaining time: Some of the projects don't estimate time remaining very well. For a while, I knew to divide the estimated remaining time by 3 to get a better estimate of actual remaining time. And if I can divide by three, so can the programmer! Updates: Send emails every month to keep me informed on new projects, or on projects I do not know about. Information and feedback: Tell people about the research that comes of it. Better feedback/knowledge of what was being achieved. Do the individual results outweigh their impact on climate change (i.e. carbon dioxide from electricity generation)? Translation: Giving some model of “speech”, in different languages, to forward to contacts/schools. The cause: Publicize widely-supported ideals behind the projects (i.e. finding a cure for cancer) to attract non-technical users. 7. Raising awareness Get new users: Contact universities/schools and ask them to contribute to scientific research by running BOINC as a background task when their lab computers are idle and unused for any other purpose. That alone would give BOINC thousands more cores. Raise awareness about the system: Show people that volunteer computing does not compromise security of Local Area Networks in professional/business environment. Marketing: Better marketing, projects that can have a more immediate impact on society, especially in third world economies. 8. Rewards Tangible rewards: Provide some sort of tangible reward. Not necessarily cash (that would be nice), but maybe stuff donated by someone (corporate entities or a philanthropist) with deep pockets. Or perhaps credit for higher education tuition. Bring more fun for volunteers: Create game running in the background. Tax reduction: Tax credit for the energy we donate! Some prize incentives: Provide incentives for volunteers (e.g. prizes, awards, money or lottery tickets). Variable scoring: Some projects may need to offer more credit to attract more volunteers. Importance of credits: Remember volunteers are not being paid or compensated for any of their work – so what is the harm in letting them have a credit race? 9. Make it a community Community spirit: Make it more of a community by bringing developers closer to end-users in an effort to gain a deeper understanding of the issues that arise during implementation. A faster release cycle and simpler access to optimized binaries on a variety of platforms would also be highly welcome among those who donate CPU-cycles. 10. Better user manuals and documentation Offer written documentation: Show some messages (news) as part of the Bionic work screen to show how this is contributing to life on earth. Have there been tangible benefits from the use of CPU time versus electrical costs of running each of the projects. Funding for projects and documentation: Better funding and project documentation/science from project leaders. 11. Promotion Publicity: Advertise much more about. Provide more information to a broader public. Word to Mouth: Get governments, schools, universities, NGOs and other organizations etc. to promote volunteer computing. Even private businesses could run it on their office computers and maybe advertise their involvement on their products. Untapped computer power lies in universities and schools: A vast amount of untapped computer power lies in universities and high schools. ‘My high school alone has over 300 computers, and I believe it is a fair assumption that universities have even more. However, when browsing through profiles and groups, you rarely see schools.’ Link to UC Berkeley: Advertise that the project is based at UC Berkeley. _______________________________________________ boinc_dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ssl.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/boinc_dev To unsubscribe, visit the above URL and (near bottom of page) enter your email address.
