Looking back on my definition of interaction from earlier in this course, I believe it to be a little too simplistic and vague almost. Of course interaction pertains to what happens when two individual entities come into contact with one another and produce some sort or reaction or result. I think I didn’t completely understand how interaction is more than just that. I skimmed over the idea that there is a special kind of process and ‘logic’ behind what the result is, and it’s that process that makes something interactive or not. There are things that are more interactive than others, but they’re still interactive at the basic level. Determining whether or not something is interactive or not is also a situational kind of decision, its all about something is used and what kind of information is returned.
One processing project I decided to examine was Attractor 0. The project is fairly simple at first glance, which is one of the things I personally like about it. The program tracks the location of the mouse and modifies the location of certain small points while drawing lines of their paths. I think it creates a soothing feeling while also allowing the user to create a pretty picture. I think this project falls on the lesser interactive side since there’s only one thing the user can do to the project, but the output prompts the user to continue using it which is what makes it pretty interactive. The incentive the keep using it is important and I hope to include that same motivation in my final project.
While The Mario Mushroom Cube is interactive, it doesn’t align with what I want to do in my final project. The process is more than just a yes or no result, but there would be a loss of seamlessness in the project when you’d go back to reset it. That pause the user would have to take to reuse the project would break to connection and lessen the impact the project has on the user. I want to lessen this disconnect as much as possible so that users are able to immerse themselves as much as possible. If a user is constantly thinking about what has to be done to make the project work, then an element of truly interacting with the project would kinda be lost.
After looking back and exploring new projects, my definition of interaction is based in the how something responds to given input. If the output doesn’t come from a yes or no logic or elicits a reaction of some sorts, it cant be really interactive. I will acknowledge the fact that just about anything can be debated on the side of interactive or not, but that is a due to personal definition differences. The take away in defining interaction is that whether or not something is or isn’t really isn’t the problem, how interactive something is qualitative. I think the Attractor 0 is entertaining and interactive, while someone else might not find it as nice as me. But the project is taking the input and is responding to it constantly unlike the Mario block that only can execute once before needing to be reset.