1. A method for monitoring communication over a network with a network monitoring device (NMD) that performs actions, comprising: generating measurement information based on network traffic that is monitored by the NMD; generating one or more metrics based on the measurement information, wherein the one or more metrics are associated with one or more characteristics of the monitored network traffic; generating layout information for a user-interface based on one or more results of one or more heuristics, wherein the one or more results of the one or more heuristics are based in part on the measurement information; providing one or more ranked positions in the user-interface to display one or more metric visualizations, wherein a rank for each of the one or more ranked positions is based on one or more of the measurement information or the one or more heuristics; displaying the one or more metric visualizations in the user-interface based on the layout information that includes geometry information for the one or more ranked positions, wherein the one or more metric visualizations are associated with the one or more metrics; and when one or more portions of the measurement information exceed one or more defined threshold values, performing further actions, including: modifying the layout information based on the one or more portions of the measurement information and one or more other results of the one or more heuristics; and modifying the display of the one or more metric visualizations based on the modified layout information.