Vision in Movement / Study

Trail, not Track.

A track is drawn before anyone moves. A trail is what moving leaves behind. Three small models of the difference.

I dislike tracing a path that was decided for me. The journey map, a standard tool of my trade, can only draw the decided path. This is a sketch toward a notation that could draw the other kind. I call it a movement score.

01 / Track and trail

TrackReplay #1

The line is drawn first. Every pass is the same. No new line is left.

TrailWalk #1

The line comes from walking. The traces overlap into a texture, and that texture is the ground for the next step.

The start and the end are the same on both sides. The only difference is where the line comes from. A journey map can draw the left side only. With a notation for the right side, a team could ask whether a design is carrying people or letting them walk. Tim Ingold calls the two transport and wayfaring.

02 / Can you leave the line?

Same person, same impulses. Only one of them can leave.

TraceTryOwn pathWalk #1 / 50

ClosedPushed back 0×

Each attempt to leave piles up outside the wall, like fuzz. The walked line on walk 50 is the same as on walk 1.

OpenOn the route

First tracing. Then trying, scattering, and settling into a path that is not the recommended one.

Recommended routeWalked lineImpulse pushed back○ A place worth a visit

On both sides the person wants to stray in exactly the same directions. On the left the wall returns them, so nothing shows in the walked line. A heatmap would report that everyone uses the recommended route, no problem. The fuzz outside the wall is the animal trail that could not form. Overlay its directions and lengths, and the path that did form on the right faintly appears.

03 / 通う, to commute

You stop looking. Then the line branches.

通うkayouTrip #1 / 32

The upper arc is the way there, the lower arc is the way back. They never become the same line.

Noticing…trip 1 → now

Duration…trip 1 = 100

Lines1incl. grown from bases

NoticingA shop I learned ofShop, now a baseSpot, a new destination

This one comes from my own commute. At first everything is fresh and I look around. Soon I think only of arriving, and I stop looking. People take the shortest route, so something that began open to many possibilities settles into a single line.

But when I learn that an interesting shop exists nearby, a mountaineering shop for example, the walk spreads beyond the line and the map widens. In the model the shop appears from outside the walk. No whisker reaches it, because I did not come across it by looking. Once a line is established, new commutes seem to grow from such places. It feels close to those apps where the places you have walked become the map.

One number falls out of the model. Duration drops, then rises again when the detours begin. A tool that watches only efficiency would record the moment life got richer as a regression.

Not looking and widening are separate events here. Noticing has already fallen to zero when the first shop appears. Where the knowing comes from (a friend, a search, a sign) is outside the model, and I am leaving that open.

04 / What a movement score would record

	Journey map	Movement score
Line	Drawn first, by the designer	Left behind, by the person walking
Unit	Touchpoint	Fork, deviation, repetition
Time	One use	How the 10th and the 100th differ
Success	Less friction	Something grows in the person
Question	Where do people drop off?	Where can they draw their own line?

Status

These are concept models, not data. Every value is placed by hand: the direction and strength of each impulse, the length of each phase, the chance of a detour.

Duration and branching could be counted from GPS logs. Noticing cannot be counted from position alone.

Track is not the villain. A tired commuter wants to be carried. The notation needs a rule for when carrying is the right design, and that rule does not exist yet.