Reading Chris Crawford’s first chapter on interactivity reshaped how I think about what makes a system truly interactive. At first I believed that something as simple as reacting to an input was enough. For example, when you open a refrigerator and the light turns on, I thought of that as interactivity. Crawford’s model of listening, thinking, and speaking challenged this assumption. He showed that real interactivity is more like a conversation, where input is not only noticed but also processed and answered in a meaningful way. This made me see that many things I used to count as interactive are really just reactive, because they skip the step of thinking.
This idea also helped me reflect on my own coding work. In my self portrait sketch, the eyes follow the mouse and the mouth curves up or down depending on mouseY. At first I was satisfied with these features because they give the impression of interaction, but after reading Crawford I realized that they are closer to one-way responses than to genuine dialogue. The system is listening and speaking, but it is not really thinking about how to respond. That missing step makes the interaction feel mechanical rather than conversational. I started to recognize that stronger interactivity requires the program to interpret or evaluate the input, not just mirror it back in a predictable way.
Looking ahead, I want to design sketches that create a deeper back-and-forth with the user. One improvement would be making more features react to user input. But, instead of only reacting in fixed ways, the program could process input in a way that gives the impression it has some awareness or personality. For example, rather than the mouth always curving in the same manner based on mouse position, the system could shape its response in ways that feel more expressive or varied, like how a person reacts differently in different contexts. This would give the user a sense that their actions are acknowledged in a meaningful way and make the interaction more engaging.