CASTOR: listening to engaging context-aware stories outdoors

In this paper we present a novel tablet application for the delivery of narrations that uses an extended set of context dimensions (i.e., location, weather, season, time of the day and social context) for determining the availability of the content. The application is part of a software suite that has been designed for managing all the phases of creation and processing of context-aware stories, and that has been tailored and tested with a class of children aged 7. While many context-aware applications take advantage of the knowledge of the context for diminishing the cognitive load of the users or simply informing them, in this work context-awareness is used for augmenting the user engagement. The paper will present the results of an exploratory study of the application outdoors, focusing on two primary issues: the engagement, defined as the sum of six relevant parameters, and the relevance of the context dimensions as perceived by the children listening to the stories.