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Taco Spaghetti: a dish to improve collaboration


In this video you’ll see a data visualization made up of colorful interwoven ribbons. Those ribbons represent taco messages and were coined taco spaghetti by a HeyTaco! customer. The name has stuck ever since, no pun intended 😉, and by watching the video above you’ll be able to make your own.

What is taco spaghetti and how can I make it?

It’s an example of a chord diagram and useful for showing flows of information between entities (people, teams, geographies, etc). In the video above it’s used to identify opportunities for collaboration at a company.

All you need to get started is a spreadsheet application like Microsoft Excel and your taco data.

  • Non-admins: download your personal taco data on your profile page by clicking the download data button
  • Admins: download your team data on your analytics page and people information on your people page.

Now that you have your data, simply watch the video above to learn how to interpret and make taco spaghetti.

Other taco data applications

This is just one type of data visualization you can make. Network node maps, text analysis, and customized leaderboards are other options. The key to any data analysis project is to make sure you have a question you’re trying to answer beforehand. That’ll help you pick the right tool for the job.

If you have taco data projects you’re working on email us at [email protected]. We’d love to hear about and share them with the taco community.

Quick note about humane taco data

People analytics is a hot topic in the business world these days. We believe data about ourselves is best used to empower change and have better conversations. It can be tempting to use data to make decisions in isolation, but data points rarely tell the whole story. It’s much more important to talk to the people behind the data to build stronger relationships and discover new opportunities.

Resources for chord diagrams
-Create a chord diagram with Circos
-How to present a chord diagram