A central issue in designing collaborative multi-surface environments is evaluating the interaction techniques, tools, and applications that we design. We often analyse data from studies using inductive video analysis, but the volume of data makes this a time-consuming process. We designed EXCITE, which gives analysts the ability to analyse studies by quickly querying aspects of people’s interactions with applications and devices around them using a declarative programmatic syntax. These queries provide simple, immediate visual access to matching incidents in the interaction stream, video data, and motion-capture data. The query language filters the volume of data that needs to be reviewed based on criteria such as application events, and proxemics events, such as distance or orientation between people and devices. This general approach allows analysts to provisionally develop theories about the use of multi-surface environments, and to evaluate them rapidly through video-based evidence.