A strongly interactive system listens carefully, thinks with some complexity, and responds in a clear way that affects what the user does next. It feels more like a back and forth conversation. I agree with Crawford that calling a shampoo bottle or a basic light switch “interactive” weakens the word, because those things only react in one fixed way. At the same time, his strict rejection of books, films, and performances as non interactive feels narrow to me, because people often respond to media through comments, edits, or shared viewing, which shapes the experience indirectly. Crawford seems biased toward systems that resemble one on one dialogue and software with explicit input and output, and less interested in social or cultural interaction around media. That bias is useful for learning to design, but it also raises concerns about how we value hybrid experiences like interactive films.
When I look at my p5 sketches through this lens, I see that they often stop at reaction instead of interaction. For example, a sketch that draws the same circle on every mouse press listens, thinks in a fixed way, and speaks with a single repeated output. I want to move toward voice based interaction, where the computer listens to the user’s voice through the microphone and transforms volume and rhythm into evolving line drawings, so the user’s sound shapes the image in a continuous back and forth. Practically, this means using microphone input, mapping volume to line thickness, length, and color based on the tone of the user, and storing recent sound levels so the drawing reflects how the voice changes over time. I am also interested in adding simple rules, such as a quiet period that slowly fades the image and bursts of loud sound that produce sharp strokes, because these choices ask the user to experiment with their voice instead of repeating a single gesture.