At Marek Pawlowski’s MEX (Mobile User Experience) conference this week in London, I saw Zi Corporation’s Qix product, an in-handset interactive search user interface that is compelling. As users type on the numeric keypad, Qix utilizes predictive text analysis to produce optimized search results in the form of sequential menu choices on the phone. Qix differs from T9 and similar predictive text technologies, which display only the best word guess rather than the digits typed. In T9, “84” appears as “Th”, as the predicted combination of one element of each set, (T, U, V) and (G, H, I). T9 has many usability problems, but is well suited to text message entry.

In the example photo for Qix, typing “93” is interpreted as any combination of one element of each of the following two sets: (W, X, Y, Z, 9) and (D, E, F, 3). The result set is displayed in a list, with a logical order: phone numbers, contacts, handset features, optimized results, and then everything else. In the example, a phone number in the contacts list, “+1 33 935 60 68 55” includes “93” as part of the digit string. Next in the list is a contact, “Wendy Crétien”, which contains “WE” as part of the string. Zi optimized the search results further for the “Web Browser” feature, which also contains “We”. I was unable to witness the performance of off-handset searches, which could be frustrating due to data service connection speeds.

As it was demoed to me, Qix optimizes all of the phone’s key features, like the camera, clock, and alarm. They go further to monetize off-handset terms, such as song titles and artist names. The fundamental link to external search is promising, and allows the operator to monetize keywords by prioritizing off-handset results.

Performance in the demo I saw was terrific, on a Nokia Series 60 phone. I’d like to see Qix on a Fastap or other QWERTY phone, but I was quite impressed with the utility and apparent simplicity.