In Uncountable, your data is organized into three key entities: material families, projects, and experiments. This article introduces each of these and walks through how to navigate between them in the user interface.
The diagram below provides a high-level overview of how these elements are structured.
Material Families
At the highest level, material families are used to separate independent datasets. They are, in effect, isolated instances of Uncountable data. Data between material families cannot be aggregated in visualizations or machine learning tools.
Some companies use a single material family for all of their data, while others use multiple. Use cases for separate material families include:
- Product Lines: Different types of materials (e.g., polymers vs. inks) with distinct ingredients and properties.
- Locations: Teams in different geographical regions managing local datasets.
To navigate between material families:
- Access the Select Projects page. By default, this page is accessible by clicking the Uncountable logo in the navigation bar.
- Use the Material Family dropdown at the top of the page to switch views.
Projects
Once you’ve selected a material family, the Select Projects page will show all projects within that material family. Projects are used to group related experiments—typically aligned to a specific study, customer request, or R&D initiative.
Projects can also be organized hierarchically. Child projects inherit data visibility from their parent, enabling structured views of complex efforts.
Common ways to organize projects include:
- Studies or DOEs
- Customer requests
- Team- or region-specific work
Experiments
Clicking into a project brings you to a dashboard that displays all experiments associated with that project, including any experiments from its child projects.
Experiments are the foundational records in Uncountable. They contain all the details about how a formulation was created, how it was processed, and how it performed.
Each experiment typically includes:
- Metadata: Identifiers, timestamps, and other system-level info
- Recipe Data: Ingredients, process parameters, and instructions
- Results: Measurements, test conditions, and output properties
