Uncountable Academy is a set of self-paced, interactive courses for the formulators, technicians and scientists who use Uncountable. The courses teach the platform and the science behind it, and every one is hands-on: you learn by clicking, sliding and experimenting inside the course. The Academy is open now to all Uncountable customers at academy.uncountable.com.
Why we built the Academy
Lab software adoption is decided in the months after go-live, when scientists choose between a new platform and the spreadsheet they already know. Every scientist who drifts back takes their experiments out of the dataset the whole team searches and models from, and that loss rarely shows up on a usage dashboard. A scientist who signs in to look up one result and then records the next experiment in Excel still counts as active.
The cost adds up quickly. In its case study, Ripple Foods reports saving at least a half-day of work per scientist per week with Uncountable. That saving only comes from scientists who use the platform. To illustrate: in a 40-person R&D team where 10 scientists drift back to spreadsheets, the team gives up at least five days of work every week, or 240 working days over a 48-week year. We built the Academy to keep that from happening.
Courses that teach the reasons along with the buttons
Most software training teaches workflows: where to create an experiment, how to log a sample, which field takes the batch number. That gets a team through the first week. It doesn't stop a technician from undoing a design the moment a run gets inconvenient.
Take a designed experiment. A formulator sets up a DOE with randomized run order to separate the effect of a dispersant from day-to-day drift in the lab. A technician who knows the software but not the statistics sees 16 runs in an odd order and runs them in a tidy sequence instead. Every step was entered correctly, and the results can no longer separate the dispersant from the drift. Academy courses pair the platform with the science it's built on, so the structure Uncountable asks for makes sense to the person filling it in.
The courses are interactive for the same reason. People change an input, watch what happens and try again, which is how scientists learn at the bench anyway. An idea someone has tested for themselves holds up better under deadline pressure than one they read on a slide.
Training for everyone who joins after go-live
Go-live training reaches the people in the room that week. Within a year, a lab has new hires, transfers between sites and people who've forgotten the parts of the platform they rarely use. Without somewhere to learn, each of them picks it up from whoever sits nearby, shortcuts included.
Scale makes this harder. Clariant runs Uncountable with more than 1,000 users at over 35 global sites, according to its case study. At that size onboarding never really stops, and no implementation team can sit with every new formulator at every site. Because Academy courses are self-paced, a new technician can start on their first day, and an experienced formulator can go back to a feature they haven't touched in months.
What this means for R&D leaders
If your team already uses Uncountable, point new starters to the Academy before their first experiment, and send existing users back to it when a project moves them into unfamiliar parts of the platform. About 90 days after any rollout, pull data entry by user rather than logins, and ask three technicians why the platform wants a lot number or a randomized run order. If they can't explain it, that's where to start.
If you're evaluating platforms, ask each vendor what training exists for someone who joins in year two, and whether it covers the science or only the screens.
How to get started with Uncountable Academy
Uncountable customers can sign in at academy.uncountable.com and start any course. If you're not a customer yet, see how teams on our customers page work with Uncountable, or request a demo to see the platform.
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