Before reading Crawford’s The Art of Interactive Design, I already thought of interaction as some form of two-way communication, where both sides depend on each other for the interaction to continue. Because of this, his idea of interaction as a process of listening, thinking and speaking felt somewhat self-explanatory to me rather than completely changing how I understood it. However, I agree with his argument that interaction can exist at different degrees. Two systems might both respond to a user, but one can offer much more interaction depending on how it processes and responds to what the user does. I don’t think every interaction has to necessarily be meaningful either. Some interactions can feel pointless, even if they technically involve communication. What interests me more is whether the interaction actually contributes to what the creator is trying to achieve.
This made me think differently about the sketches I have created so far in this class. I haven’t really designed them around the people interacting with them. Most of my decisions have been based on my own interests and what I wanted the sketch to show. For future sketches, I would like to experiment more with interactions that can produce unexpected results rather than having every user action lead to the exact same response. For example, the program could respond differently depending on what the user does or how they interact with it. If I’m creating something specifically for another person to interact with, I think I would want their actions to lead to something that encourages them to continue experimenting with the sketch or even makes them think about what is happening. This makes me question whether an interaction can be considered successful even if it works, but fails to get further response from the user.