It might be interesting if there was a persistent contextual menu that listed the options related to any object/person you're closest to -- having to manually 'engage' with objects and then select options gets a bit tedious.
+1. It's more fun to tap the pet/water icons above trees than it is to click, see menu, choose option. I like any ideas that help you forget that you're at a computer, playing a game. Helps with the world / suspension of disbelief. I think that's why the new tutorial kinda irked me. It was a tutorial and it left you with a supplementary tutorial quest. It could've been a birth level or something more game-world.
+1 I especially don't like having to click piggies to see if they need feeding. The menus are cool on unusual objects but on the common items less clicks, more fun.
We are soon to change things such that any interaction which only has one option becomes single click (rather than click once to open menu and then click again to chose the single option).
When the interaction is single-click (e.g., pick up item from floor, tend patch, spin wheel, etc.) the cursor will change and a subtle overlay will tell you what will happen when you click. For things with a few common options, we'll probably have something like the water/pet icons, but ... better.