In the reading by Chris Crawford, they define interaction as “a cyclic process in which two actors alternatively listen, think, and speak.” He emphasizes that there are two actors, not one, and that is the only way to define something as interactive, but I disagree with his definition. I feel like there does not have to be a back and forth and an interaction can just be something simple like the user just clicking something and something appears. For example, in my Assignment 3, I had an interaction where if the user presses a key, a bubble appears, and if you click on the bubble, it disappears. To me, that is interaction even though the p5.js system is not necessarily thinking or speaking. I would describe it as what he thinks is low interactivity.
With that, I think characteristics of a strong interactive system is, first of all and most important of all, the system responding to the user. This means that the user should have input and be able to affect the outcome. Now, what makes a strong interactive system I think should be having multiple different outcomes, so multiple user inputs. In the section about “Thinking” he was talking about communication and how when you talk with someone who is a slow thinker, the conversation is meaningless and how “Good thinking can make a conversation sparkle.” Therefore, another strong interactive system has to feel engaging, so the user feels like whatever it is they are controlling in the system matters and is worth their time.
Finally, after reading and analyzing the text, some ideas I have for improving the degree of user interaction in my p5 sketch is maybe having the bubbles make a pop sound when the user clicks it. I could also have the user decide what size and color they want so they could personalize it. I also thought of having the background move as a gradient to the direction of where the mouse hovers.