Every dashboard is green. The lab is cold and the portal is down.

When every dashboard is green but users are suffering, the problem is a watermelon that grows from measuring the wrong things in the wrong way. The cure is to measure what researchers, students and staff actually experience, and to act on it.

• University IT and Estates teams know the pattern: tickets close within target and the maintenance calendar is green, while a researcher cannot log in before a grant deadline and a lab sits at fourteen degrees.
• Stop reporting availability as a percentage. Ninety-nine per cent sounds impressive, but a few minutes of downtime during clearing, an exam upload or a funder submission is not a rounding error; report the minutes users feel, at the times that matter.
• Fix the satisfaction survey. A 1 to 5 scale invites a lazy mid-point and averaging produces a bland number; work cited with the University of Surrey showed averaging to be invalid. Use a forced 1 to 4 scale, ask for reasons behind low scores and report the percentage at each score.
• Audit your reports. Sansbury describes a contact centre report thicker than two textbooks that the receiving Finance Director did nothing with; if you suspect nobody reads a report, stop producing it for a month and see who notices.
• Keep users informed. In Sansbury's ferry story, a single announcement would have kept queuing passengers calm; consumers dislike delays but hate not being kept informed far more.