My presentation from the Tableu Customer Conference (TCC'2012) in San Diego.

1. TCC’2012 Presentation (Final: October 4 2012)
Stefan Popowycz, BSc, BAH, MA
Senior Information Designer
Senior Business Systems Architect
Canadian Institute for Health Information

2. Presentation Overview
• Who I am, what I do, what
CIHI does, and why our work
is important.
• Explain the CHRP solutions,
the data, the challenges we
faced, and detailed examples.
• Why we used Tableau
Desktop and Public Premium.
• Things to remember, authors
to read, questions.

3. Data Visualization Teaser
Visualizations I created:
Visualization I did not create:
3
http://pinterest.com/stefanpopowycz/tcc2012-presentation/

4. Who am I
• Stefan Popowycz, B.Sc., B.A.Hons., M.A
• Trained as a Medical Sociologist,
Statistician, Researcher
• Senior Information Designer / Senior
Business Systems Architect
• Lead Design and Information Architect
for the Canadian Hospital Reporting
Project 2012 Custom Public Reports.
• Information Access & Delivery Team,
Canadian Institute for Health
Information

5. CIHI
• The Canadian Institute for Health Information
(CIHI) is an independent, not-for-profit
corporation that aims to contribute to the
improvement of the health of Canadians and
the health care system by disseminating
quality health information.
• Additionally, CIHI's data and reports are
provided to help inform health policies,
support the effective delivery of health
services and to raise awareness among
Canadians in general on current research and
trends in the healthcare industry that
contribute to better health outcomes.

6. Why is our work important?
• Healthcare is extremely
important for all Canadians.
• Healthcare data is used to inform
decision makers on progress,
overall comparison, and most
importantly best practice.
• Traditionally, CIHI has had a clear
obligation to analyze these data,
and communicate the results to
all Canadians (vision & mandate).

7. Why is our work important?
• However, there is a clear
shift in the way people are
organizing, sharing, and
consuming data.
• Proper data visualizations
facilitates the
comprehension of complex
analysis and patterns.
• But, data visualizations do
not need to be boring and
uninviting.

8. Challenges
• We needed to design a
solution that was sexy, fast,
inviting and easily accessible
to all Canadians.
• Most importantly, it needed
to be public facing. Hence our
gravitation towards Tableau
Public Premium.

9. Challenges
• Added bonus, if it was functional
on a mobile platform with social
media capabilities.
• Aside from great visualizations,
there was a critical requirement
that detailed contextual metadata
(tooltips) be available for end
users.

10. Why Tableau?
• Tableau was the only tool that allowed
us to quickly create and publish data
visualizations with many best practice
features already inherent within the
software.
• “Strong belief in better communication
through visualization.” – Popowycz, 2011
• Never done before: cloud computing
and aggregated health care metrics.

11. Why Tableau Public Premium?
• The Tableau Public Premium
environment has the capacity to
sustain tens of thousands of
simultaneous hits.
• Proved invaluable as 10K
impressions within 24 hours, 40K
within 4 months.
• The 99% SLA was an important
selling feature.

12. Why Tableau Public Premium?
• Some might question, why no
server?
• Purchasing Tableau Server
was too cost prohibitive at
the time and Public Premium
proved to be a relatively
inexpensive solution for
public reporting.
• Easier to convince a VP of
$10K vs $180k-$220K.
• Stepping stone analysis.

13. Data
• Aggregated analytical datamart with
accompanying dimension tables; ETL
coded in SAS and exported to Excel.
• Why aggregate? Guaranteed
performance within the Tableau
Public Premium environment.
Unknown architecture, taking a risk.
• We also had the requirement of not
permitting the end user, for the time
being, to download the dataset.

14. What is CHRP?
• The Canadian Hospital
Reporting Project (CHRP) is a
national quality improvement
initiative providing hospital
decision makers, policy makers
and Canadians with access to
clinical and financial indicator
results for more than 600
facilities, from every province
and territory in Canada.

15. What is CHRP?
• The public data visualizations
of the CHRP project were
designed with the intent to
visually and interactively
communicate key messages to
end users using a web-based
business intelligence solution.
• In essence, we wanted to
create interactive infographics.
• We create two (2) categories of
data visualizations.

16. CHRP Key Findings
• The first category of visualization
we created we called “Key
Findings”. Nuggets of information.
• It's summary level data, at 2-3
different levels of analysis for a
specific indicator of interest, and
represents an interactive
approach to data presentation.
• We created two (2) clinical and
two (2) financial key findings.

17. CHRP Key Findings
• These follow information design
best practice with regards to
content, colour, typography,
interactivity, and design.
• Things to note: 4 key findings in
total; 4 vizs in each dashboard;
increasing hierarchy; all titles and
heading done in Adobe Illustrator
at 300 dpi; all embedding within
our web ECM.

18. CHRP Stand Alone Solution
• The second category of data
visualizations created we called
“Stand Alone Interactive Solution”.
• These consist of more complex
data visualizations that combine
several types of data within an
interactive real-estate.
• Contains guided analysis, allowing
the end user to focus in on
information of interest.

19. CHRP Stand Alone Solutions
• Layered views of the same data
provides better contextual
understanding of the whole
message being communicated.
• Things to note: 2 complete
solutions; 2 tabs, first tabs have
around 5 vizs, second tab
around 9; all headings and titles
done in Adobe Illustrator; all
embedded within our web ECM.

20. CHRP Key Finding Links
• http://public.tableausoftware.
com/shared/6W78QWZHY
• http://www.cihi.ca/cihi-ext-
portal/internet/en/document/
health+system+performance/i
ndicators/performance/chrp_i
report_findings_b

21. CHRP Stand Alone Links
• http://public.tableausoftware
.com/shared/KWB7FMHPS
• http://www.cihi.ca/cihi-ext-
portal/internet/en/document
/health+system+performance
/indicators/performance/chrp
_ireport_financial

22. Tableau Desktop

23. Things to Remember
• Look at your data: what
story do you want to tell?
How will people consume
this information?
• Remember that a chart is
always more memorable
than a table.
• Keep it simple. Less is more.
• Design, don't decorate.

24. Authors to Read
• David McCandless
• Manuel Lima
• Stephen Few
• Jen and Ken O'Grady
• Donna Wong
• Edward Tufte
• Nathan Yaw
• Jason Lankow, Josh
Ritchie and Ross Crooks

25. Websites to See
• good.is
• visual.ly
• visualnews.com
• columnfivemedia.com
• thedailyviz.com
• datavisualization.ch
• pinterest.com
• printmag.com

26. Questions

27. Thanks!
• Stefan Popowycz
• Email: spopowycz@cihi.ca
• Website: www.cihi.ca
• Information Design Pinterest:
http://pinterest.com/stefanpopowycz/inf
ormation-design/
• TCC’2012 Pinterest:
http://pinterest.com/stefanpopowycz
/tcc2012-presentation/
• LinkedIn:
ca.linkedin.com/in/stefanpopowycz