How to use Science United

If you're already running BOINC on a computer, you can use Science United as follows:

• Create a Science United account.
• Upgrade the computer to BOINC version 7.16 or later (preferably the current version).
• Go to the BOINC Manager. If you're using the Simple View, go to the View menu and select "Advanced view".
• In the Tools menu, select "Use account manager".
• Select Science United.
• Enter the email address and password of your Science United account.

That's it. Consider detaching from the projects you were previously running.

What is Science United?

Science United (SU) is a new way to participate in BOINC-based volunteer computing. SU doesn't replace the old way of doing things, where you people attach to specific projects; rather, it's an alternative where you choose science areas, and SU picks the projects for you. The computing power of SU participants is divided among all approved BOINC projects.

SU is designed for people who

• are not technical;
• don't want to spend much time on BOINC (fiddling with settings or browsing project web sites);
• are motivated primarily by science goals.

Science areas, not projects

When you participate in SU, you sign up for science areas, not projects. You can choose the areas and sub-areas you want to support, and the ones you don't. Similarly for the location of the research.

SU is implemented as an "account manager", like BAM! and GridRepublic. When you attach a computer to SU, it tells your computer what projects to run, based on your preferences and other factors. These may change over time, even from day to day. You may end up running a project that didn't exist when you first signed up. You don't have to browse and evaluate projects; in effect, SU does that for you.

Encourage new projects

This means that a new project can be assured of a certain amount of computing power, without doing any publicity or even developing a web site. The need to do these things, and the risk of investing in BOINC, have been major barriers to entry for scientists who might otherwise use BOINC. The hope is that SU will lead to the creation of more projects.

User-friendliness

In my conversations with "average" computer owners (e.g. friends and family) about the BOINC user interface, several themes emerge:

• It's too complex.
• It presents too much information, and especially textual information. When people are shown information they assume they need to understand it all.
• It emphasizes competition (e.g. leaderboards). Some volunteers are intimidated and put off by this.

SU tries to remedy these problems. In looking at the SU site, there are few things that you might notice:

• New users download BOINC by the "auto-attach" mechanism where a) the download happens directly, rather than going through the BOINC web site, and b) when BOINC starts up, it's already attached to SU.
• There are no leader boards. Credit isn't shown anywhere. Users see graphs of their own work history, but no comparisons with other users.
• We try to minimize the use of technical terms like FLOPS.
• Computing preferences have been reduced to three options: green, standard, and max.
• We avoid showing lots of information.
• We show information graphically rather than textually where possible.
• We de-emphasize the notion of project. Users can see what projects they're contributing to, but only by drilling down a bit.

SU's target user wants to install the software in a couple of minutes, set it, and forget it. They may or may not ever return to the SU web site.

By default, SU sends users a weekly "status" email whose purpose is to keep the user informed about their contribution, and to alert them if any of their computers have stopped doing work.

Feedback

Give feedback (bugs, questions, feature requests) on the SU message boards. You can also email me (David Anderson) directly. Remember that the target audience of SU is not BOINC 'power users'. Pretend you're interested in science but know little about computers. Would you understand the overall idea of SU? Would you be able to follow the instructions? Would you follow through to the end?

More information

Two more detailed documents are available:

Coordinating Volunteer Computing describes the goals and motivations of Science United.

Science United: Implementation explains how things work under the hood.