# Trail, not Track #### Overview Three small moving models of one distinction. A track is drawn before anyone moves. A trail is what moving leaves behind. ![[trail-not-track.webp|Two panels side by side. On the left a dot follows a fixed dotted line. On the right many thin blue lines between the same two points overlap into a texture]] *Trail, not Track (2026). Left: the same line replayed. Right: 39 walks between the same two points.* [Open the study](https://trail.uxculture.studio) --- *November 15, 2026. Published as a test, not as a finished piece.* 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. The line is there before anyone moves. I wanted to see the other kind of line, the one that exists only because someone walked. The third model comes from my own commute. People take the shortest route at first, 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. It feels close to those apps where the places you have walked become the map. I am calling the notation I am looking for a movement score. This is the first sketch toward it, not the notation itself. --- **Status.** These are concept models, not data. Every value is placed by hand. In the model of commuting a shop simply appears when I learn of it. Where that knowing comes from is outside the model. Track is not the villain either: a tired commuter wants to be carried, and I do not yet have a rule for when carrying is the right design.