Week 3 Reading Response – Saeed Lootah

When first going through the article I enjoyed the authors’ style of writing. Even though his style may not have to do with interactivity I found it interesting how he it seemed he was at times angry or fed-up with the current state of things surrounding the word interactivity. This may show that he is biased in that he starts off by feeling annoyed rather than objectively considering how the word interactivity is being used already as he only starts by mentioning advertisements, then throughout the text mentions more real-world scenarios (like reading, or dancing) but I wish I could have seen more mention of how interactivity is used in academia as words are often loosely used/defined in normal conversation.

In any case he makes a compelling alternative to how the word interactivity should be used. For example interactivity should be more than just being true or false but should consider how interactive something is. Then also mentioning what qualities are needed for something to be highly interactive. Listening, thinking, and speaking. The only problem I see is that I believe how interactive something is, is subjective, but whether or not something is interactive is objective. The author believes that if one of the qualities are missing then it cannot be considered highly interactive but people can play games against someone else who is reacting to their moves (which makes it interactive) but not speak at all for example and still find it highly interactive since it is based on emotions rather than logic alone. One of the interesting things I found towards the end is that a good interactive designer should have a good understanding of both the backend and the frontend of a product. Backend in this case meaning the algorithms, and frontend the general appearance.

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