Interactivity

For example, complex systems that detect and react to human behavior are sometimes called interactive.

Under this perspective, interaction includes responses to human physical manipulation like movement, body language, and/or changes in mental states.

This is different from other aspects of the artifact such as its visual appearance, its internal working, and the meaning of the signs it might mediate.

A bystander can imagine how it would be like to use an artifact by watching others use it, but it is only through actual use that its interactivity is fully experienced and "felt".

New Media academic Vincent Maher defines interactivity as "the relation constituted by a symbolic interface between its referential, objective functionality and the subject.

[9] In computer science, interactive refers to software which accepts and responds to input from people—for example, data or commands.

Interactive software includes most popular programs, such as word processors or spreadsheet applications.

By comparison, noninteractive programs operate without human contact; examples of these include compilers and batch processing applications.

Some common platforms for creating interactivities include Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight.

Notable authoring tools for creating interactivities include Harbinger's Elicitus.