Chris Crawford’s paper on interactivity was very enlightening. Although I came in understanding the term “interactive”, I was pleasantly surprised that he had to argue/explain to others about what it is because many people confused it with “reaction”. When he mentioned what the difference was between the two, I realized that I also did not have a firm understanding of interaction (based on his definition).
Something interesting that he brought up was about how an interactive product is a weak link in a chain if not all three conditions (listening, speaking, and thinking) are met regardless of how strong the other two links are. It led to think whether that is actually true; does there exist a project that only takes 2/3 of the conditions, but was still able to make it interactive.
Overall, I think the paper was a bit too strict on what qualifies as an interactive piece. I personally think as long as the user can play around with a work piece and get a response out of it, it is interactive. Whatever the work is, the project doesn’t need to have thinking involved (the response does not have to come from thinking).