Reading Response – The Art of Interactive Design

In the reading, The Art of Interactive Design by Chris Crawford, it details a clear distinction between reactive and interactive, which is a crucial idea that resolves around when describing interactivity. And, Crawford offers a definition of interactivity as a process that involves listening, thinking and speaking – in other words, input, process, and output. Recalling back to the conversation about “what is interactive” in a previous class, we once mentioned that everything surrounding us – anything that deals with our five intrinsic senses – are interactive. However, even though Crawford indicates that interactivity can be subjective, it became evident that not everything around us are interacting with us – rather we are reacting to the things around us. For instance, as one of the medium brought up in the class, the magnetic door would not be considered interactive because there is no thinking involved in the process.