Reading Chris Crawford’s chapter “What Exactly Is Interactivity?” made me rethink what I usually call “interactive.” Especially, now as I am taking 3 IM classes, and we often see the artworks and come to the term interactive, I have started to understand how truly important it is. After the reading, I realized that I often label something as interactive just because I can click or move something and it changes, but Crawford’s explanation made me see that real interactivity is much deeper than that. I really liked his comparison to conversation, it made sense that true interactivity should feel like a back-and-forth exchange where both sides “listen, think, and speak.” This idea made me reflect on my own p5 sketches and notice that, while they respond to user input, they do not necessarily feel like a conversation. They just react without much “thinking” or meaningful change based on the user’s action.
Speaking of 5p, the reading challenged me to think about how I can make my work more engaging and meaningful. I felt motivated to experiment more with giving my sketches some kind of “memory” or adaptive behavior so that the experience feels less mechanical and more like a dialogue. For me, a strongly interactive system is one where the user’s input actually matters and shapes the outcome in noticeable, sometimes unexpected ways. It should feel like the system is “paying attention” and changing its behavior based on what I do, rather than just executing a simple trigger. I think strong interaction also invites me to explore, experiment, and maybe even get surprised by the result.
After the reading, I had some ideas of how I can improve my interactivity of p5 sketches. I could add elements that respond over time or evolve depending on how much and how often I interact. For example, instead of bubbles just appearing when I click (assignment 3 – OPP), I could make them “learn” from my clicks, maybe clustering in areas where I click often or changing colors based on patterns of interaction. I could also make my sketches remember past actions so that the experience feels continuous rather than resetting each time. I think, after this steps, it would move my work closer to what Crawford calls a real conversation between user and system.