Higher Education · Institutional Analytics · Power BI · Data Visualisation

Meridian Institute Analytics:One Cockpit for an Entire University

Four separate dashboards became one platform with five tabs, and we did it without changing the software underneath. Getting an answer went from about six minutes to two.

Meridian

Case study

RoleLead UX Designer (Heuristic audit, information architecture, data-visualisation system)

ScaleEntire university ecosystem (Undergrad, Grad, Research, HR) · 94% leadership adoption in term 1

Before

4disconnected dashboards
6 minto answer a leadership question
7clicks to reach a segmented view
1 yrof default context
11pie charts
9disputed metric definitions

After

1unified analytics platform
2 minto answer the same question
2clicks to reach a segmented view
5 yrsof historical context
0pie charts, fit-for-purpose charting instead
0disputed definitions: official source and owner on every metric
94%leadership adoption in term 1

Before figures from the audit of the four legacy dashboards; after figures measured across six validation rounds. No abandonment, error-rate or satisfaction numbers were collected, so none are claimed.

The Challenge

Meridian University ran its analytics across four separate Power BI dashboards, one each for undergraduate admissions, graduate admissions, research and HR. If a dean wanted to know how the university was doing overall, they had to open all four, compare the numbers by hand, and spend about six minutes finding the answer.

Our Solution

I brought the four together into one Power BI platform. The software stayed the same, so all the work went into the information architecture and the rules for how things are charted. That took the time to an answer down to two minutes, and 94% of university leadership were using it within the first term.

The Overview tab. The KPI cards show the change against last year, and clicking any one of them takes you into that module.

01Operating Context and Constraints

This was not a redesign where you get to pick a new stack. The old dashboards were built in Power BI and the new ones had to ship in Power BI too. The tool was fine, the way it had been put together was the problem. Three things shaped the approach:

The Power BI sandboxEverything had to be something Power BI could render on its own. I set the palette, the grid spacing and the chart rules against what the platform could actually do, before designing any screens.

Two minutes and one hourA dean wants a headline in two minutes and an analyst will dig for an hour. Rather than build two interfaces, I put the headline numbers first and made every tile a way into the detail underneath.

Graceful degradationUniversity data has gaps in it. Demographic panels sometimes cannot be shown because the counts are too small to publish, so I designed those empty states properly instead of letting the layout break.

02The UX Audit: Diagnosing the Legacy Clutter

Before I sketched anything I ran a heuristic audit across all four of the old dashboards. What came out of it explained why people had stopped using them:

What the audit found

11 pie charts

across 12-tile grids

Aesthetic and minimalist design, severity 3. Visually exhausting and mathematically hard to read.

Filters reset

on every navigation

Recognition over recall, severity 4. Every time you moved between tabs you had to set your filters up again from scratch.

1 year

visible in any view

Flexibility and efficiency, severity 4. A basic trend question meant an IT ticket.

Blended averages

matching no one

Match with the real world, severity 4. Undergraduate and graduate figures were averaged together into numbers that did not describe anybody actually on campus.

9 metrics

with disputed definitions

The same name meant different things on different dashboards.

4 tools

to open for one answer

Six minutes on average to a leadership question.

Legacy gender pie — Crops from the old dashboards, with the branding removed. Three of the eleven pie charts.

Legacy geography pie — Crops from the old dashboards, with the branding removed. Three of the eleven pie charts.

03Architectural Explorations and the Core Pivot

The structural pivot was moving from four isolated tools to one platform with five unified tabs: Overview, Undergraduate, Graduate, Research and HR.

I mapped the new information architecture and user flows in hand-drawn wireframes, keeping the focus on hierarchy before any visual polish.

The Overview cockpit pivotRather than dropping people straight into data tables, there is now an Overview tab that answers how the university is doing at a glance. Each KPI card takes you into the module underneath it.

Five tabs, one vocabularyUndergraduate, graduate, research and HR all use the same definitions, the same palette and the same rules about which chart to use.

Overview to drill-downA dean can stop at the headline and an analyst can keep clicking down into it. Neither of them is using a cut-down version of the tool.

screen 01

Overview, the institutional cockpit

screen 02

Undergraduate, Summary, with the world map

screen 03

Undergraduate, Application Totals

screen 04

Graduate, Summary, with the world map

screen 05

HR, Summary, plain and protective

screen 06

HR, Trends Headcount, ten-year combo

screen 07

Research, Summary, money over time

screen 08

Research, H-Index distribution

The wireframes for the summary tabs, the drill-throughs and the year-over-year layouts. Structure first, before any visual design.

04The Final Design: Trusted, Readable, Segmented

Once the wireframes were settled I built the UI system on top of Meridian's official brand typography, with a palette chosen for reading data: navy, crimson, teal and purple.

Trusted dataNine metrics on the old dashboards meant different things depending on who you asked. Every number now traces back to an official source, and hovering over it shows the definition and who owns it.

Fit-for-purpose chartingI deleted all eleven pie charts. Shares became donuts, comparisons became sorted horizontal bars, and geography became a bubble map.

Contextual deltasThe year-on-year colours follow what the number means rather than whether it went up or down. Applications falling is red. Summer melt falling is green.

Global persistent filters

The highest-severity finding, fixed: your filters now stay put as you move between the undergraduate, graduate and research tabs.

Before: the four legacy dashboards — Before and after. On the left the old layout, cluttered and full of pie charts. On the right the Undergraduate tab, with horizontal bars, donuts and the bubble map of international applications.

After: the Undergraduate tab — Before and after. On the left the old layout, cluttered and full of pie charts. On the right the Undergraduate tab, with horizontal bars, donuts and the bubble map of international applications.

The Graduate tab — The graduate, research and HR tabs, all running on the same system.

The Research tab — The graduate, research and HR tabs, all running on the same system.

05The AI Layer: Ask Meridian

University leaders are accountable for these numbers, so automation had to be handled with care.

Ask Meridian AI is not a separate product and not the default dashboard. It is a user-invoked modal, triggered by an Ask AI button, layered over the active canvas. An optional analytical assistant that surfaces background signals and next-best actions. It explains; it does not decide.

Ask Meridian AI open over the Overview — Ask Meridian AI, open over the canvas. Every answer carries its sources, and the figures underneath stay visible.

06Field Validation and Measured Outcomes

I ran six rounds of validation with real university stakeholders and changed the UI on what came back. One example: the Overview tab was trying to answer four separate questions, so I cut it down to one.

validation rounds

Leadership · enrollment · HR · analysts

Moderated walkthroughs on live prototypes

Design change, and the outcome it produced

Design change	Measured outcome
Overview cockpit, one question answered in a glance	6 min → 2 min to a leadership answer
Global persistent filters across tabs	7 → 2 clicks to a segmented view
Multi-year views by default	1 → 5 years of context on screen
Official definition, source and owner on every metric	9 → 0 disputed definitions
Fit-for-purpose charting rules	11 → 0 pie charts