Unlike traditional phrase suggestion or text disambiguation technologies, kannuu provides a system of lookup that enables the user to methodically select chunks of character sets from the kannuu index. Once the kannuu index tree is generated, lookup is executed by presenting the user with sets of options that are based on the highest priority assigned to strings of characters at each menu level. These options are determined by the kannuu index to be the most likely next set of characters required to build the lookup phrase.

As options are selected, the kannuu algorithm traverses to the character set in the tree that corresponds to the item that has been selected so far. kannuu then analyzes the priority values of the candidate branches at the next menu level and presents the next highest priority set of character string options to the user. At each menu level, the options that are not selected are added to an exclusion list for that lookup session. Because of this, any branches in the chain below the set of characters that were not chosen at each menu level are ignored for the rest of that lookup session.

The resultant benefit for the user is that the kannuu lookup algorithm requires less time to sift through the least amount of characters strings necessary to find the desired lookup phrase. Because of this model, the speed at which content is discovered is dependent on the length of the character string, not the number of items in the source list. This key competitive advantage enables kannuu to work with source lists of any size, with only fractional increases in the number of clicks required to find content as the list exponentially grows.

The image below illustrates the partial word completion algorithm traversing the kannuu index to find ‘Stairway to Heaven’ by Led Zepplin: