Systematic Ideation Effectiveness Study of TRIZ

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to present experimental results of a specific ideation method TRIZ (an abbreviation of a Russian acronym of “Teoriya Resheniya Izobretatelskikh Zadatch” meaning theory of inventive problem solving) as compared to ad hoc methods used by students. It is critical to understand how and why TRIZ works as it can lead to improvements on how to teach this method, and also how to analyze ideation methods in general. Our hypothesis is that TRIZ improves the creativity level of subjects using it as observed in the produced design outcomes. The experiments were conducted simultaneously at two institutions: University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) and University of Maryland (UMD). The results were analyzed as part of an existing research partnership with Pennsylvania State University (PSU). The ideation task present here has been used in all three institutions; it is the redesign of a traffic light that uses light-emitting diodes (LED) instead of incandescent bulbs leading to snow build-up on the lights in certain climates as LED's generate less heat to melt the snow. UTEP and UMD student groups were tasked with redesigning the LED traffic lights to resolve this issue. The assessment was performed on the outcome (i.e., ideas generated) using quantity, novelty and variety as metrics. Numerical results of these metrics are shown along with conclusions based on observations of the experimental process. Data presented in this paper conclude that TRIZ does improve the ideation effectiveness metrics Novelty and Variety while slightly reducing Quantity when compared to a control group using ad hoc ideation methods.

La medida de la originalidad en las respuestas del test CREA

“…As we have pointed out, originality refers to novel, unusual and unique aspects (Runco & Jaeger, 2012). The study also contributes to the field of evaluation of creativity and especially to developments related to the study of ideas frequency as an indicator of originality, as presented in the studies of Runco (1999) and Hernández, Schmidt and Okudan (2013). These researches were interested in study originality as basic component of the creativity, not intended to analyze the value or utility of ideas.…”

“…Following also objective procedures for measuring originality, Hernández, Schmidt and Okudan (2013) proposed an evaluation system that differentiates common ideas from original ideas, considering the frequency of novel ideas.…”

Design-by-analogy: experimental evaluation of a functional analogy search methodology for concept generation improvement

“…Theories like TRIZ and their resulting tools have attempted to address this (Altshuller and Shapiro 1956;Altshuller et al 1985;Zhang et al 2007;Nix 2011;Goldfire 2012;DuranNovoa et al 2011;Krasnoslobodtsev and Langevin 2005;Nakagawa 2012;Houssin and Coulibaly 2011;Mann et al 2003;CREAX. (September 7, 2012); Hernandez et al 2013;Liang et al 2013), along with many more researchdriven tools and methods (Verhaegen et al 2011;Goel et al 1997;Bhatta and Goel 1996;Vincent et al 2006;Chiu and Shu 2007). However, much of this previous work often relies deeply on users/designers to create their own analogies, or search through large, unstructured quantities of results with little indication of relevance.…”

A review of TRIZ and its benefits & challenges in stimulating creativity in problem solving of pre-university students: A TARUC case study

“…According to Cameron (2010), TRIZ can be learned by everyone including children. TRIZ can be taught in a matter of hours (Belski, et al, 2014;Filmore, 2006), days (Song et al, 2014), months (Belski, 2009;Han and Seung, 2014;Hernandez et al, 2013) or years (Barak, 2013;Belski et al, 2013).…”

“…ISSN: 2414-3111 DOI: 10.20474/jahss-3.5.2 Hernandez et al (2013) studied the effectiveness of TRIZ as compared to no formal method of idea generation. The experiments were conducted simultaneously at three institutions.…”