Meridian Bank Customer Dashboard

The Problem

Meridian Financial’s online banking experience was fragmented across four separate legacy systems — checking/savings, credit cards, loans, and investments. Customers had different logins, different interfaces, and no unified view of their financial health. Support call volume was high and customer satisfaction scores were declining.

The challenge: Unify four complex financial systems into a single, intuitive dashboard without losing functionality.

Research & Discovery

• Stakeholder workshops with 5 departments to map existing systems and business constraints
• Customer journey mapping across 12 common banking tasks
• Usability testing of existing interfaces (23 participants) — average task completion was 64%
• Card sorting study to understand how customers mentally organize financial information
• Accessibility audit of all four legacy systems

Key insight: Customers think about their money in terms of goals and time horizons, not product categories.

Design Process

Unified Information Architecture

Replaced product-based navigation (Checking, Credit Cards, Loans) with goal-based views (Spending, Saving, Borrowing, Growing). Each view pulled data from multiple backend systems.

Financial Health Score

Created a proprietary “Financial Wellness” score that gave customers a single number representing their overall financial health, with actionable recommendations to improve it.

Progressive Disclosure

Designed a layered interface: at-a-glance summary on the dashboard, one-click drill-down to account details, and full transaction history available but never overwhelming.

Accessibility-First Design

WCAG 2.1 AA compliance throughout. High-contrast mode, keyboard navigation, screen reader optimization, and data visualization alternatives for vision-impaired users.

Before & After

Before: Four separate logins, product-centric navigation, overwhelming data tables, no mobile optimization.

After: Single sign-on, goal-based architecture, progressive disclosure, fully responsive, accessible design system.

Results

• 40% reduction in customer support calls related to online banking
• 89% task completion rate (up from 64%)
• Net Promoter Score increased from 23 to 58
• $2.1M annual savings in projected support cost reduction
• Won a Webby Award for Best Financial Services Experience