I really liked this text because of the way Crawford approaches interactivity as a whole and gives it a more three-dimensional aspect. I especially liked how he shows that there are different levels of interactivity, from low to high rather than treating something as simply interactive or not interactive. I think this gives a clearer way of understanding interactivity. Based on Crawford’s idea of listening, thinking and speaking, I think a strongly interactive system should have all three, but I would consider thinking and speaking especially important. The more the user can think, make decisions and respond to the system through their actions, the more interactive the object becomes. At the same time the system should listen and respond to what the user is doing. I also think a strong interactive system should give the user something back, whether that is learning something new, being influenced by the system or simply having fun.
When I think about my own p5 sketches, I feel like they suffer from a lack of interactivity because they sometimes fall into the same kind of low interaction Crawford describes with his refrigerator example. Usually, the interaction is limited to following a rule, such as pressing a button to see something else or moving the cursor to see a new colour. I could improve my p5 sketches by moving away from simple mouse clicks and allowing the system to respond differently based on what the user has already done. For example, instead of choosing colours randomly from a fixed array, the sketch could remember previous interactions and use that information to create different responses. This would make the system feel more responsive rather than just random. I also want to experiment with more complicated forms of interaction such as storing information from the users previous actions. Overall, this reading made me think about interactivity as more than just making something respond to the user. It made me think about whether the system is actually listening, thinking and responding in a way that gives the user a reason to continue interacting with it.