The MingKwai does sound similar to the Wubi (五笔 ⸺ 5 strokes) method. You type the individual components of a character or word, and any ambiguity is resolved by selecting from a short list.
For example, 比如 (= "for example") is typed "xxvk", where "x" → 匕, "v" → 女, "k" → 口. 名字 (= "name") is typed "qkpb", where "q" → 夕, "k" → 口, "p" → 宀， "b" → 子.
Of course most keys can stand for several characters (or components), and it can be hard to tell which one to use (for me), but the amount of ambiguity is surprisingly small.
It's familiar because that's the only way to do it with shape. You either select a character by shape or by pinyin. The key challenge here is to design a system that
1. can cover most characters with relative small shape collection
2. use less selection steps
3. easy to learn and memorize
Wubi is optimized on the goal to determine a character with 4 shapes with almost no alternative candidate, so the raw input speed is optimized (4 keystroke for one character, and you don't need to select in most time), but it require a lot of time learning. That enabled typewriter as an job.
Later people found pinyin + good word prediction can achieve acceptable speed, the typewriter job doesn't exist anymore.
However it's still quite painful to input ancient Chinese prose, because most of them are single character word, so you have to select from a long list of characters with same pinyin (in word mode you just input pinyin of two characters, the pinyin combination have much less alternatives). Some pinyin have about 20-30 common used characters, like "ji", "yi" etc.
For example, 比如 (= "for example") is typed "xxvk", where "x" → 匕, "v" → 女, "k" → 口. 名字 (= "name") is typed "qkpb", where "q" → 夕, "k" → 口, "p" → 宀， "b" → 子.
Of course most keys can stand for several characters (or components), and it can be hard to tell which one to use (for me), but the amount of ambiguity is surprisingly small.