Media crate: Tangible live media production interface

Live media production - the presentation of audio-visual content at events such as conferences and concerts - is a high intensity task where a small production team must interact with an amalgamation of separate hardware tools to transform and direct a variety of media sources to outputs such as large screens, preview monitors, and web-casts. We present Media Crate, a tangible tabletop interface crafted in response to the key actions and needs of live media producers. Using tangibles, previously complex and ambiguous actions can now become collaborative and easy to learn, whilst providing expressive features not present in traditional interfaces. In this paper we give a description of the Media Crate's interface, discuss how knowledge and experience of live media production impacts on the design, and finally present the results of an initial deployment of the system at a live event.