Reflection
I think a strongly interactive system has to respond quickly and meaningfully to whatever the user does. Speed matters a lot, because if there is a noticeable delay between my action and the system’s reaction, the loop breaks and it stops feeling like a conversation. It should also accept a wide range of inputs rather than just one, and produce output that is fun and exciting to receive: sound effects, motion, color, and visuals that reward the user for engaging. Using Crawford’s framework, a strong system has to do all three steps well. It has to listen properly by capturing what the user is actually doing, think by shaping its response to that input rather than repeating itself, and speak clearly so the user can tell their action caused the result. Reliability belongs here too, since bugs and crashes break the cycle completely and a system that stops responding has stopped interacting altogether.
The other characteristic is the user’s own willingness to explore. Someone eager to poke at a system will have a far richer experience than someone who isn’t in the mood, even with identical software. A good system invites exploration by making its possibilities visible and by rewarding the first thing the user tries, which is what pulls them into trying the second.
For my own p5 sketches, my main idea is to widen the range of inputs they accept. At the moment I rely on a narrow set, so I want to make more use of the cursor; not just clicking, but position, speed, and dragging, so the sketch is continuously responding rather than waiting for one discrete event. I also want to use clicks to transform the artwork, so that each click shifts the sketch into a different look or state and gives the user a reason to keep going. Beyond that, I would like to experiment with 3D, since being able to rotate and look around a shape hands the user real control rather than just something to look at, and to play with motion that reacts to the user instead of looping on its own; if the direction or speed of movement responds to where the cursor is, the sketch is listening continuously instead of just performing.