Before the reading, I thought interactivity was just another word for engagement. I thought that books, movies and anything with a user interface were interactive. But now, I understand that there is a difference between the two and that the word interactive has been majorly overused specially over the last couple of years and mainly for marketing purposes that it has lost its true meaning. Interactivity is closer to a conversation that includes the metaphoric acts of listening, thinking, and speaking (input, processing, output), while engagement is more of a one-sided conversation where there is only output (content) that the audience reacts to.
What I consider to be the characteristics of a strongly interactive system is one that has all the features to make it interactive in the first place. It has to receive an input, process the information and produce an output based on the input. All 3 aspects have to be good, and one cannot be the substitute of the other. Something highly interactive for me would make it easy for the user to input (good user interface), quickly process the information (have an efficient system) and produce an accurate output.
To improve the degree of interaction in my p5 sketches, I would try and work on each interactivity aspect individually so that they’re all equally good. For the input: I’d use more of the key and mouse functions and I would make the sketch more aesthetically pleasing, maybe including simple instructions for the user to understand what he’s supposed to do. For processing, I’d use more variables and OOP instead of hardcoding everything in order to make the code run smoother. And as for the output, I’d try and make sure that the program actually does what it’s supposed to do and that it is accurate in its reactions by testing multiple times.