ds-ref-archetypes

name

ds-ref-archetypes

description

Splunk Dashboard Studio archetypes reference — the four canonical layouts (executive summary, operational monitoring, analytical deep-dive, SOC overview / wall) with panel-mix fingerprints, audience profiles, viewing context, and per-archetype defaults. Use when picking layout shape for a new dashboard, when ds-couture commits to an archetype, or when the user asks "what should this look like for X audience?".

ds-ref-archetypes — Splunk dashboard archetypes

Status: skeleton only. Body extracted from ds-ref-design-principles in a follow-up task.

Scope (what's IN)

• The 4 archetypes (executive summary, operational monitoring, analytical deep-dive, SOC overview / wall) with deep-dive per archetype.
• Panel-mix fingerprints per archetype.
• Canvas dimensions per archetype (1440×960 exec, 1920×1080 SOC wall, etc.).
• When-to-use rules per archetype.
• Hybrid examples and smells (when archetypes mix).

Out of scope (what's NOT here)

• Color palette per archetype — see ds-ref-color.
• Grid/spacing math — see ds-ref-layout-grid.
• Anti-pattern detection per archetype — see ds-ref-anti-patterns.

Consults

• ds-ref-personas (persona → archetype mapping).

Consulted by

• ds-couture (after Design Context Protocol, when committing to an archetype).
• ds-design (when wireframing a new layout).
• ds-init (during scope phase).

Source / migration

• Extracted from: ds-ref-design-principles "Dashboard archetypes" section (lines ~25–115 of pre-split file in _backup/2026-04-29/).
• New content: hybrid examples, audience-context expansion.

Estimated size

M

---

The four archetypes at a glance

Archetype	Audience	Panels	Primary question
Executive summary	Leadership	6–8	Is everything healthy right now?
Operational monitoring	On-call, NOC	8–12	What is happening right now?
Analytical deep-dive	Analysts, investigators	10–14 (use tabs)	What caused this and what does the data show?
SOC overview	SOC analysts	7–10	Where are threats, how severe, what just happened?

Each archetype below documents audience, panel count, purpose, typical panel mix, canvas dimensions, and an ASCII layout sketch.

Executive summary

• Audience: Leadership — VPs, directors, business owners.
• Panel count: 6–8 panels. Anything more dilutes the story.
• Canvas: 1440×960 (laptop, occasional projector).
• Primary question: Is everything healthy right now?
• Purpose: A single calm story per dashboard. Each panel answers "yes / no / by how much" against a target. The viewer spends ~90 seconds scanning before clicking away or asking a follow-up.

Typical panel mix:

• 4-KPI strip across the top (the headline numbers, with trend deltas and units).
• 1 trend chart (line) showing the headline metric over the period.
• 1 part-to-whole (pie / donut ≤6 slices, or sorted bar) for mix.
• 1 status table (top-N services / regions / business units, status coloured).
• Optional: 1 markdown panel framing the period and the takeaway.

ASCII layout:

+-----------------------------------------------------------+
|  KPI 1     |   KPI 2    |   KPI 3    |   KPI 4            |
|  big num   |   big num  |   big num  |   big num          |
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                           |
|   Trend over time (line)                                  |
|                                                           |
+-------------------------------+---------------------------+
|                               |                           |
|   Mix (pie / sorted bar)      |   Top-N status (table)    |
|                               |                           |
+-------------------------------+---------------------------+

Operational monitoring

• Audience: On-call SREs, NOC operators, platform teams.
• Panel count: 8–12 panels.
• Canvas: 1920×1080 (NOC monitor) or 1440×960 (laptop check-in).
• Primary question: What is happening right now?
• Purpose: A dense status surface that surfaces the live state of every critical service. The viewer drops in for 5–15 minute check-ins, scans the wall for red, and drills into specifics.

Typical panel mix:

• Service / host status grid (singlevalueicon or coloured table rows).
• 2–4 line / area charts for core metrics (latency p95, error rate, throughput, saturation — RED + USE).
• 1 event / alert feed (events viz or table sorted by time).
• 1 capacity gauge (fillergauge or markergauge).
• Heatmap or punchcard for hour×weekday patterns when relevant.

ASCII layout:

+---------------------+---------------------+---------------------+
|  Service status     |  Active alerts      |  Capacity gauge     |
|  (icon grid)        |  (count + severity) |  (fillergauge)      |
+---------------------+---------------------+---------------------+
|                                                                 |
|   Latency p95 (line)              Error rate (line)             |
|                                                                 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                                 |
|   Throughput (area)               Saturation (line)             |
|                                                                 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                                 |
|   Recent events / alerts (events or table, time-sorted)         |
|                                                                 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+

Analytical deep-dive

• Audience: Analysts, investigators, capacity planners, data scientists.
• Panel count: 10–14 panels — use tabs to keep any single tab under 8.
• Canvas: 1440×960 or wider, often scrollable.
• Primary question: What caused this, and what does the data show?
• Purpose: A guided exploration surface. The viewer expects to pivot, filter, drill, and compare across multiple dimensions. They spend 15+ minutes per session and tolerate higher density in exchange for analytical depth.

Typical panel mix:

• Filter / parameter panel (inputs at top: time range, dimension pickers, comparison toggles).
• Summary KPI strip with deltas vs. previous period.
• Time-series lines with comparison overlays.
• Distribution / breakdown (column, bar, histogram).
• Detail table with drilldown (the workhorse).
• Optional: scatter / bubble / parallelcoordinates / sankey for correlation and flow analysis.
• Tabs split the surface: Overview / By region / By segment / Detail.

ASCII layout:

+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| [Time range] [Dimension] [Compare]    Inputs / parameters       |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
|  KPI w/ delta  |  KPI w/ delta  |  KPI w/ delta                 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Tab: Overview | By region | By segment | Detail                 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                                 |
|   Trend with comparison overlay (line)                          |
|                                                                 |
+--------------------------------+--------------------------------+
|                                |                                |
|   Distribution (column)        |   Correlation (scatter)        |
|                                |                                |
+--------------------------------+--------------------------------+
|                                                                 |
|   Detail table (drilldown enabled)                              |
|                                                                 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+

SOC overview

• Audience: SOC analysts (tier-1 triage, tier-2 investigation), threat hunters.
• Panel count: 7–10 panels.
• Canvas: 1920×1080 wall display, often replicated to multiple screens. Dark theme mandatory.
• Primary question: Where are threats, how severe, what just happened?
• Purpose: A 24/7 vigilance surface. The viewer is on a multi-hour shift watching for anomalies; the dashboard must be readable from across the room and never strobe or distract.

Typical panel mix:

• Severity-coloured event count strip (critical / high / warning / info — semantic palette).
• Geographic origin map (splunk.map markers or splunk.choropleth.svg).
• Top attackers / top targets / top techniques (sorted bars or tables).
• MITRE ATT&CK heatmap or punchcard for technique frequency.
• Recent high-severity events feed (events viz, severity-coloured).
• Optional: link graph for entity relationships during investigation.

ASCII layout:

+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
| CRIT    | HIGH    | WARN    | INFO    | TOTAL   |
| count   | count   | count   | count   | count   |
+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
|                                                  \
|   Geographic origin (map markers)                |
|                                                  |
+-----------------------------+--------------------+
|                             |                    |
|   Top attackers (bar)       |   ATT&CK heatmap   |
|                             |                    |
+-----------------------------+--------------------+
|                                                  |
|   Recent high-severity events (events viz,       |
|   severity-coloured rows)                        |
|                                                  |
+--------------------------------------------------+

SOC wall sub-archetype — dual-context default

The SOC overview is almost never deployed to a wall display only. The wall and the paired analyst console share the same dashboard definition — same JSON, same panels, same data sources. The wall is the always-on ambient surface; the console is the click-through investigation surface.

This means:

• Drilldowns are mandatory on every entity-displaying panel (host, IP, user, hash, severity bucket, geo location, MITRE technique-id). Zero visual cost on the wall (the wall ignores click handlers); critical value on the console (the analyst clicks through to investigate). "Wall display has no input device" is NOT a valid waiver for dropping drilldowns.
• Tabs add value, not subtract. The wall shows tab 1 (auto-cycle or static via deep-link); the console gets all of them (live threats, past trends, compliance posture, asset health). Never reflexively reject tabs because "SOC walls don't have tabs" — that guideline applies only to pure ambient walls without paired consoles, which is rare.
• eventActions and row-level click handlers belong on every events-viz and table panel. Same logic as drilldowns: invisible on the wall, essential on the console.
• Section header markdowns explain what each zone shows and where to escalate. New analyst on shift needs to read the dashboard cold; section headers carry that load.
• Footer with runbook + on-call link + Slack channel is mandatory for SOC archetypes. The wall doesn't read it; the console operator does.

The dashboard is dual-context by default. Authoring a SOC overview as if it's "wall only" is a Scope Check rejection — see ds-couture's Scope Check gate.

If a deployment is genuinely wall-only with no paired console (rare — confirm with the user before assuming), the interactivity affordances can be downgraded with explicit waivers. But the default is dual-context, not wall-only.

---

Hybrids and smells

When two archetypes blend in one dashboard:

• Exec + analytical — usually a smell. The two have opposite density tolerances. Exec wants 6–8 calm panels with one story; analytical wants 10–14 with pivoting depth. If the user asks for a "drill-down summary," pick analytical and add a small KPI strip on top — not the other way around. An exec dashboard with a buried detail table reads as cluttered to leadership and shallow to analysts. Pick one master archetype and let the other show up as a single supporting panel, not as a co-equal half.

• Operational + SOC — common and OK; both expect dense grids, status colours, dark theme, and 24/7 viewing. The fingerprint differences are panel-mix (geo / severity / MITRE in SOC, metric-time-series / capacity in ops). A combined NOC+SOC wall is a legitimate pattern when one team owns both reliability and security triage. Keep semantic colours consistent (critical = red, warning = amber) and split the canvas into clear ops-zone vs. SOC-zone bands.

• Exec + SOC — almost always wrong. Exec demands generous spacing and one calm story; SOC demands density, parallel signals, and dark theme. Leadership does not need a wall display, and SOC analysts do not need quarterly KPIs. If asked for "an exec view of SOC," build a small exec dashboard whose KPIs link out to the SOC dashboard via drilldown — keep them as two surfaces.

• Analytical + SOC — possible for tier-2 SOC investigation consoles. Treat as analytical-with-severity-colouring rather than trying to merge fingerprints: keep the analytical layout (inputs, tabs, detail table, scatter / link graph) and apply the SOC dark theme + semantic severity palette. The MITRE heatmap belongs on the pure SOC overview, not on the investigation console.

Rule of thumb: if you cannot name the master archetype in one word, the dashboard is probably trying to be two things at once. Split it.

---

Audience-context expansion

For each archetype, four context dimensions shape every downstream decision (colour, typography, density, drilldown depth):

Dimension	Executive	Operational	Analytical	SOC
Viewing distance	~50 cm (laptop)	~70 cm (NOC monitor)	~50 cm (laptop)	~100 ft (wall)
Time-on-screen	90 sec scan	5–15 min check-in	15+ min session	8 h shift
Decision consequence	Quarterly review	On-call page / runbook	Multi-day investigation	Immediate response
Lighting	Mixed office	24/7 dim NOC	Mixed office	Dark wall display

How each dimension cascades:

• Viewing distance drives KPI font size and minimum panel dimensions. SOC wall at 100 ft needs 56–72 px majors and 4×4 grid cells minimum; exec at 50 cm tolerates 36–48 px.
• Time-on-screen drives information density. A 90-second exec scan cannot afford >8 panels; an 8-hour SOC shift can absorb 10 parallel signals because the operator returns repeatedly.
• Decision consequence drives semantic colour weight. A red KPI that pages an on-call must look unmistakably critical; a red KPI that informs a quarterly review can be muted.
• Lighting drives theme choice. Dark NOC / SOC walls demand dark theme with high-contrast semantic colours; mixed-lighting offices default to light theme.

Use this table as a checklist when picking an archetype: if the user's stated audience does not match the row's four dimensions, ask again before committing.