I think that a strongly interactive system is one where the user feels involved and where there is a continuous exchange between the user and the system. Crawford describes interaction as a process where two actors “listen, think, and speak.” I found this interesting because it means that a system should not just react to an action, but should take the user’s input, process it, and then respond in a meaningful way. This makes the interaction feel more like a conversation between the user and the system. Based on the examples given by Crawford, I understood that a strongly interactive system needs all three parts working together, not just one or two of them.
For improving the degree of user interaction in my p5.js sketches, I could make the system behave according to the user’s actions. For example, I could add mouse functionalities where objects change depending on where the user moves the mouse or what they click on. I could also use keyboard inputs to let the user control different parts of the sketch. Instead of having the same response every time, I could make the sketch respond differently depending on the user’s actions. This would make the user feel like they have more control over what happens.
In the future, I would like to make these interactions more complex and meaningful. Animations or transitions could be added to make it clear how a specific user action led to a specific outcome. I could also make the system remember previous user actions and use them to affect what happens later, such as in a game where the user’s previous choices change the experience. This would make my sketches feel less like animations that the user is simply watching and more like interactive systems where the user and the program are continuously responding to each other.