CONDITION TRACE: Evidence in Motion

Condition reports capture what was visible during an examination, but they cannot always establish when a physical change actually occurred.

In this fictional museum-loan case, the obvious question, “Where did the damage happen?”, asks more of the evidence than the records can support.

So I reframed the problem:

Condition Trace is an interactive conservation-evidence workflow that lets a reviewer inspect 4 condition records, examine the object under raking light, preserve a human-reviewed observation, compare non-equivalent documentation, and resolve the evidence into a qualified archival finding.

The return-arrival examination introduces raking light. As the grazing angle changes, a hairline crack on the upper-right shoulder becomes legible.

That examination state is preserved as OBS-04 and remains visually continuous through the rest of the workflow.

V4 was designed around 4 interaction laws:

Evidence has continuity. The captured observation persists through comparison, finding, and final record.

Light is the instrument. Raking light performs an actual examination job rather than acting as a visual effect.

Evidence has resistance. The final record requires a deliberate hold-to-seal interaction before closure.

Archive closes the loop. The workflow resolves into a durable Evidence Record instead of a generic success state.

The system reaches one deliberately narrow conclusion:

Earlier records were captured under different examination conditions, so prior physical absence cannot be confirmed.

Condition Trace does not automatically detect damage, assign a confidence score, determine physical cause, identify the exact moment of damage, or assign responsibility or liability.

The goal is not to make uncertainty disappear. It is to make the boundary of the evidence visible and traceable.

All museums, institutions, objects, and condition records in this prototype are fictional demonstration data.

Live prototype: https://day16-condition-trace.vercel.app

Source code: https://github.com/Faadil1/day16-condition-trace