After completing the reading I have realized that I too have been misusing the word “interactivity”. I only ever saw it from the user’s side, eg: how can the user interact with the webpage/game/interface, but not how the computer/system responds to the user’s actions. Upon reading some of Crawford’s examples of interactivity being used incorrectly, I initially found myself disagreeing with his points. This is especially the case with the refrigerator, since I believed that the refrigerator is interacting since it is responding to your actions by turning the light on or off. However, as I continued reading I understood that interactivity is not a discrete thing, but is more continuous. A system can be highly interactive, not as interactive (like with the refrigerator), in the middle, etc.
This has got me thinking about what a highly interactive system would entail. I think it would be something that allows many actions from the user, hence responses from the system after analyzing said actions. For example, in this week’s assignment I made a simple apple catching game. The game consists of falling apples where the user can catch them in a basket. I think there is a medium level of interaction. This comes from the fact that the system has to check if the user has caught/collided with an apple using their basket, if so, the system will remove the apple and spawn it again. I think to further improve interactivity, I could add a lives system. So if the user fails to catch the apple, their lack of action will result in the system reducing a life. However, I believe that interactivity doesn’t just mean more possible actions from the user and system, but more meaningful and complex actions. This makes me think that simply adding more features to my game would not necessarily make it more interactive. Instead, the way the game responds to the user’s actions should also become more meaningful and complex.