Using "Yes-No" Game in Teaching TRIZ

© N. Khomenko 1992-1994
jlproj@gmail.com
Handout for the workshop
"Foundations of TRIZ as a General Theory of Strong Thinking”

The “Jonathan Livingstone” Project is dedicated to the use of TRIZ-technologies in the field of education for various categories of students. Therefore, there arose a problem of how to devolve the knowledge accumulated while studying the most general and universal problem solving principles. Since 1986, the Minsk TRIZ School has practiced the new technology of teaching TRIZ as the foundations of the General Theory of Strong Thinking.

The first results of the work were presented in this article some years ago. To date, this technology has been successfully tested on auditoria of teachers, schoolchildren, researchers, businessmen and engineers (both in the countries of the former USSR and abroad). Based on the results of these workshops, a more developed and amended version of the brochure is underway. It reflects the modern state of the teaching technology itself as well as modern approaches to the solving of various classes of problems from the viewpoint of the General Theory of Strong Thinking.

 

The proposed method of teaching TRIZ-technologies on the basis on the “Yes-No” game has been practiced at the Minsk TRIZ School since 1986. Along with traditional techniques of teaching LSCP, TSEL, standards, etc., non-traditional forms of activities are conducted. Attempts are made to activate subconscious mechanisms of training information perception.

This work results in that the solutions proposed by students at some education stage are definitely of TRIZ character though the students have not yet mastered TRIZ terms and notions on the conscious level.

This becomes evident when comparing the solutions to training problems proposed by students at the first lessons with those they usually find some lessons after. Sometimes, it is not easy for students to explain the way they arrived at a solution because they travel this way on the subconscious level. At first, they are even not familiar with clear definitions of TRIZ notions they used to find the way to a given solution. This is also confirmed by the work with a reference group which started the training course half year later. The students of the reference group ask questions in a random manner. With the trained group, the questions had a system character and their nature proved that the students based themselves on the main TRIZ notions (IFR, contradictions, resources) and sought to narrow a possible field of search for a solution.

 

1. Problem Definition

Analysis of ARIZ-related problems made it obvious that adequate work with a contradiction (i.e. ARIZ-based work) only starts after students have formed a more or less clear idea of the main ARIZ operations: work with contradictions, IFR package, work with resources, PhC-resolving principles, aggravation of a contradiction, understanding a problem not as a single and indivisible contradiction but as a complex system of contradictions.

In addition, they need an elementary ability to orientate in the rest of the TRIZ-TTSE-TCPE components, because ARIZ is a tool for a complex use of the entire TRIZ, for analyzing a problem according to the 18-screen scheme of strong thinking (G.S. Altshuller's complete scheme of strong thinking).

The general scheme of teaching TRIZ-TTSE-TCPE consists in that skills of complex use of TRIZ-TTSE-TCPE mechanisms are developed at ARIZ lessons in parallel with teaching different sections of TRIZ-TTSE-TCPE. This, however, gives rise to the following problem:   

The fact is that performing ARIZ steps we, willingly or unwillingly, also deal with a contradiction, resources, IFR and conflict aggravation at each step. And this work is performed not only with one problem, as it may seem to us, but with the entire system of contradictions, of which we are now quite aware and which are tightly interconnected. 

The following contradiction can be formulated:
it is necessary to know how to perform individual steps of the algorithm
in order to learn to work with ARIZ,
but
it is necessary to be able to work adequately with ARIZ and TRIZ-TTSE-TCPE as a whole
in order to provide sufficiently good performance of individual steps.

The situation is also accentuated by the fact that a problem under consideration is being permanently reformulated and split into subproblems.

What can be done to help students cope with this tangle of problems?

First of all, ARIZ is a tool for forming a thinking style in accordance with the 18-screen (complete) scheme of strong thinking, the thinking style, which, in its turn, makes it possible to solve various problems containing a contradiction or reduced to a contradiction. Therefore, the formulated contradiction can be resolved in the following manner: at each lesson, ALL basic TRIZ tools are presented to students, but emphasis is laid on one or two of them. At the next lessons, the situation is the same but the emphasis is laid on other mechanisms. Students gradually come to understand the equi-importance of all mechanisms, their interaction and interconnection. However, following the ARIZ steps under this mode of operation is impossible.

As it has turned out, it is needed as all.

It is enough just to teach practical use of the basic ARIZ notions: contradiction, IFR, resource, contradiction-resolving principles. It is not so much the performance sequence of ARIZ steps that is important in ARIZ-based work, but rather the functional completeness of performed steps.

Required minimum:

• Resource analysis for revealing the peculiarities of a specific problem situation, primarily, objective laws, regularities and phenomena preventing the achievement of desired results (IFR).
• Resource analysis for revealing a system of contradictions and formulating a system and ideal final results.  
• Resource analysis for revealing contradiction-resolving principles and achieving an ideal final result (IFR).

TRIZ teachers who solve not only training but also real life problems know that all these processes go in parallel.

Another complex of problems arising at TRIZ lessons relates to technical particulars concerning a specific problem but having nothing to do with the study of TRIZ principles. The point is that in the course of solving training problems students spend much time on some details which are inessential for TRIZ teaching but seem extremely important to them as professionals in a given field. No doubt, this may be important for them as specialists, but causes waste of time and is useless for mastering TRIZ-technologies.

It is just why an attempt was made to find a type of training problems which would be helpful in uncovering the method gist – mechanisms of work with a contradiction, specific resources and objective system transformation laws, showing the potential of G.S. Altshuller’s multiscreen scheme of strong thinking - without distracting students' attention to secondary details.

1.1 What requirements should these problems meet?

They should:

1. be easily understandable to students,
2. be difficult to solve,
3. have a fuzzy definition like ordinary technical problems,
4. not contain any technical particulars pertaining to students’ fields of competence,
5. general education and everyday knowledge typical of students should be enough to solve such problems.

Thus, they should be ordinary contradiction problems, but not technical or special ones. Then what type of problem should they be?

2. Solving Process

A "Yes-No" game which meets all the above requirements has been used in the TRIZ course for a long time so far.

1. it is easily understood by students,
2. changing the problem conditions can change the problem complexity and definition fuzziness, which provides a teacher with an additional tool for controlling the training process,
3. it generally does not contain any narrowly-specialized information,
4. students possess all information necessary for solving such problems,
5. a “Yes-No” game can be based on any kind of material. Any fact can be transformed into a problem of this type.

The latter is of a special importance because permanent work at schools or colleges allows students to freely exchange information and the problem secret becomes instantly known to everybody.

3.  “Yes-No” Game Description

The gist of the game consists in unraveling some mystery proposed by a leader (the leader’s role can also be played by one or more students). To unravel a mystery, participants can ask questions to the leader. The only limitation is that the question should be asked in such a form that the leader can answer “Yes” or “No”. This is where the game’s name comes from.

At first, it is not easy for students (irrespective of age) to ask this type of questions, but learning to ask them is itself a good practice in asking questions for obtaining information required for problem solving.

The leader is allowed to give the following answers:

• "Yes"
• "No"
• "Both yes and no" - answers of this type are very useful as they reveal a contradiction which is an effective key to problem solving.
• "It is inessential". Teachers can use this type of answer for controlling the problem solving process. Sometimes, they can give inessential information thus hindering problem solving. Or they can facilitate students’ work by indicating with such a question that proceeding in a given direction is useless. 
• "No information is available about it" - this answer is given when a leader really does not have any information or when he or she wants to complicate a problem. It is often necessary to solve real problems under information shortage. Students should be trained doing this during the entire training cycle.

4. Types and Sources of Problems for the “Yes-No” Game

4.1 Determining a feature (attribute) value

With this type of problems, it is necessary to guess a specific value of a thought-of attribute.

It can be, for example, the height of the highest mountain, the length of the longest cave, the depth of the deepest ocean point or the deepest cave, the height of the tallest and shortest men who ever lived on the Earth. Chemical elements composing one or another substance (using Mendeleev's table). Dates of some events. Longitude and latitude of some geographical points; continents where some geographical object is situated, etc.

The sources of this type of problems may be reference books of various kinds, depending on the teacher’s needs and purposes: Guinness World Record Book, historical data books, various information tables, etc.

The entire set of guess problems aimed at guessing an attribute value can be grouped into two subsets:

• problems having "linear" features (attributes)
• problems having "geographical" attributes.

4.1.1 Problems having "linear" features (attributes)

This is the best type of problems to start the game with. Such problem can be easily used for demonstrating the main principle of the game - revealing, limiting and consistent narrowing of a solution search field.

The most convenient and illustrative way of demonstrating this principle is working with attributes having numerical values or with some other features (attributes) the values of which can be aligned one after another or ordered along a linear axis (for example, a numerical or rainbow colors axis).

Splitting a set of values (aligned with a numerical or any other axis) into two parts allows a required feature value to be determined quickly enough.

For example, a leader says, 'I've thought of a number between 0 and 1000. Determine this number'. An untrained student will be puzzled because it will be necessary to choose between 1000 versions at worst. But with the search field segmentation principle (Von Neumann’s algorithm) this problem can be solved by asking no more than ten questions.

This example is a good illustration of how a solution can be found without checking all possible versions.

4.1.2 Problems having "geographical" features (attributes)

Problems where the attribute values cannot be ordered along an axis are the next step in mastering the game.

For example: “Guess what continent (country, city, science, make or type of a car, architectural style, type of a metal-working machine, etc.) I've thought of". In this case, the feature name (attribute) will be the name of a continent and a set of feature (attribute) values will be a list of all continents; the attribute will be a make of a car and a set of values will be a list of makes.”

All the attributes given in the above examples allow some kind of grouping and ordering of their value sets. For example, the set of values for the attribute “make of a car” is large enough but it can be ordered by manufacturers' countries, by continents, by manufacturer's name, by production date, by the level of mass-scale production, by the designation (truck tractor, autotruck, car, etc.).

Several types of classification can be created for the value set of every such attribute similar to presenting a geographical object as a physical, political, geological, tectonic, population density, animal and other types of maps. 

These are more complicated problems which serve as a bridge for transfer to the next class of "Yes-No" game problems.

4.2 Describing an object

The aim of this type of problems is determining the names of features (attributes) used for describing a thought-of object and determining the values of these features (attributes).

Such problems can be derived from encyclopedias, encyclopedic dictionaries, literature (special, fiction, fantastic, fairy-tales, etc.).

With common objects, a simple question can be asked: “What object have I thought of?”

If an object is taken from literature, a question can be changed: “What does a CONFIGURATOR mean?” By asking questions students must reveal the largest possible number of attributes and their specific values describing the object of interest. 

There is another type of questions: "Who is Yefrosinya Polotskaya?", “Who is Maxim Kammerer?” The first question deals with the name of history and the students’ task is determining when one or another person lived, what was his or her occupation, why his or her name has taken its place in history. As to the second question, it relates of a fictitious character and students need to determine the literary work it belongs to, the author and name of this work as well as the main features of the character.

The common objective of both questions is detailed description of some fantastic or real events.

Naturally, the problem hero may be both an animal and an object (both real and fantastic).

Of course, it is better to use the names of real historical personalities. This is an unobtrusive way of acquainting students with an outstanding person, his or her life and problems. Students can be also proposed problems which were solve by this person.  Such people may be Auguste Piccard, Ignaz Semmelweis, Alisia Alonso, Joan of Arc, etc.

At this stage, nonmaterial objects, notions, terms, etc. can already be introduced. Doing this elevates the mind, helps to better understand the meaning of the terms “object”, “attribute” (feature, feature name), attribute value (the value of a feature having this name), their interrelation.  

Using “The Riddle World” by A. Nesterenko promises good results. The fact is that with A. Nesterenko’s method, one can give an interesting form to object description problems. A riddle serves as a “bail” for finding a solution, but the information communicated by the author is not always sufficient for determining the riddle object. It is just here that the “Yes-No” game can come to the rescue. Students can be proposed to ask additional questions of the “Yes-No" type.

Problems of this type are designed to form object classification skills: revealing of feature names by which objects are classified and feature values by which objects being classified are differentiated (or united) into groups.

4.3 Situational problems

The preceding two sets of “Yes-No” game problems (determining the feature (attribute) name and value and describing the object through attributes (feature names) and their values) are preparative by character and imply introduction to the game rules and main mechanisms, formation of skills of asking a distinct question, comparing obtained pieces of information.  But really creative are situational problems designed to develop basic skills of analyzing and solving complex problems as systems of contradictions.

This is where the main bulk of work aimed at mastering TRIZ as a general theory of strong thinking (GTST) actually starts.

Problems of this type may have different sources such as scientific folklore, historical facts (preferred), various curiosities or fictitious stories. A certain stock of funny stories has been accumulated by TRIZ specializes, but not all of them are adequate for use at TRIZ lessons (especially with children). The most suitable materials can be found in problem books and card-files developed by the participants of the “TRIZ-Chance” system: card-files of business ideas, biological effects, biological problem book, etc.

Incidentally, there arises a research theme – synthesis of training problems for the “Yes-No” game based on real facts from the life of creative personalities, such as, for example, the card-file containing biographies of creative personalities stored in the collection of TRIZ materials of Chelyabinsk Region Library. Of special interest are biographies written by A. Altshuller, I. Vertkin, I. and Yu. Murashkovskaya, V. Korolev, V. Beresina. This topic is the most productive because it allows filling one problem with a large number of training and educational functions.

The entire set of situational problems can be grouped into two subsets: dead-end situations (which need an inventive way-out) and final situations (which require explanation of how and why they have occurred).

4.3.1 Inventive problems

This is an example of an inventive problem for the “Yes-No” game: To realize their plans, Ninjas need to pass through a garret on a moonless night. But they are running a risk of being ambushed. How can they determine whether there are people in the garret?

4.3.2 Explanatory problems

This example of an explanatory problem is derived from city folklore: wind blew, a window burst open, a glass broke, Mary died. It is necessary to give a detailed explanation to what happened.

Here is another example of an explanatory problem. A man is walking around the room. Then he dashes up to a telephone set and dials a number; he waits until the receiver is raised at the other end, goes to bed and quickly falls asleep.   

Skills of this type help industrial engineers detect causes of defects in a manufacturing process or businessmen better understand their partners’ behavior. Thus, they are helpful in situations where it is necessary to find causes of some events.

5. Peculiarities of using the game in teaching TRIZ as a general theory of strong thinking

The only thing we have to do is explaining our students that there is some similarity between problems for the “Yes-No” game and research and criminalistic problems, that all these problems have some mysterious event which needs explanation. To find an explanation, it is necessary to present a problem in the form of a contradiction (i.e., to distinctly formulate what the improbability consists in) and to resolve this contradiction.

It turned out that problems are solved much more effectively if a teacher steadily guides students toward seeking for contradictions by analyzing available resources and then to resolving these contradictions. This demonstrated the effectiveness of dealing with a problem through a contradiction.

 Situational problems are multimove problems which can be solved by resolving not a single contradiction but a system of contradictions. All this permits developing skills of work with many TRIZ mechanisms (mechanisms of work according to the complete scheme of strong thinking) which are important for solving real problems and facilitate further training, after a conscious, detailed study of these mechanisms has started.

Thus, one of the TRIZ-TTSE-TCPE mastering lines is conventionally split into two overlapping stages:

1. learning to use a complex of problem-solving mechanisms without going into too much detail as to their application (based on the work with the "Yes-No" game);
2. detailed study of these mechanisms (using the complex of TRIZ-TTSE-TCPE knowledge).

The first stage.

At this stage, much time is devoted to the "Yes-No" game. This phase takes from one forth to one third of the entire training cycle (120-160-hour training cycle). Normally, part of students (especially those older in age) leave the group as they find all this futile.

Another important line of this training stage is studying the “mono-bi-poly” pattern and Laws of Technical System Evolution (LTSE), more specifically, three Laws: coordination, dynamization, and ideality (dynamization and coordination are used to set a problem of improving the system controllability by the most ideal methods).

In parallel, TCPE is introduced. Some problems are based on the facts from the biographies of creative people. This allows LSCP to be smoothly introduced.

The game problems are easily synthesized on the basis of interesting facts from the life of СP.

It is enough to present a fact misteriously (in the form of a covert contradiction) and propose students to reveal the particulars of this event). For example: "He asked her for captainship in her army. She considered it as insolence and refused roundly. But she did not live to see the consequences of her decision. Who were HE and SHE?"

The second way is just describing somebody's dead-end situation and proposing students to find a way out of it. To do this, it is necessary to solve a complex of contradictions, find out what resources were available at that time and analyze them, etc. For example: "Blind as he was, Yaroshenko found himself on a foreign land without any means of subsistence. He found the way to survive and did not come down to begging. What would you do in such situation?" Another example: "When Auguste Piccard was preparing to descend to the depth of 11 km in the Mariana Trench – the world deepest spot – he faced a problem of emergency emersion. It was necessary to develop an absolutely reliable device for securing ballast and its timely release. Everything he had tested before was unreliable and could fail. What would you have proposed him to do if you had met him at that moment?"

These schemes can be used to synthesize not only problems based on the facts from biographies of creative people, but also problems based on any funny or mysterious episodes.

At the start, preference is given to the first type of problems. As a result, several objects are attained:

1. students are automatically taught to work in a team and listen to each other without making too much noise; this facilitates their future work on serious technical problems, produces favorable, friendly atmosphere in a training group;
2. students are taught to ask questions that immediately cut off a large portion of a search field; this will be helpful both to a teacher at a lesson (students will ask less unnecessary questions) and to students during their independent work (they acquire skills of a more purposeful search for needed information);
3. correctly asking questions is impossible without considering a situation according to the multiscreen scheme. While thinking over a question, a student has to move through different abstraction levels of notions, see the whole behind the parts and the whole composed of parts. Trained are initial skills of using the abstraction/specification mechanism, identifying an operational zone, operational time and other operational attributes used for describing the problem objects. This will come in useful while mastering and using ARIZ for solving nonstandard problems;
4. some TRIZ notions are gradually introduced against this background, without being given precise definitions (resources, operational zone, operational time, other operational attributes, supersystem, subsystem, antisystem, etc.);
5. the notion of a contradictory character of a situation and the ability to realize it are intuitively worked out. This, in its turn, removes subconscious fear of an acute and contradictory problem. As a result, students need less time to cope with tearing about between two extremes of a contradiction. They start to search for a solution which lies beyond accepted stereotypes and resolves a contradiction. At this moment, students obtain information about the most general contradiction-resolving principles proposed by G.S. Altshuller (see ARIZ-85-B, table 2 p. 1-5) which are presented in a slightly different manner.  

Situational problems of the second type are introduced gradually, while mastering a complex of mechanisms required for solving problems of the first type. As distinct from the first type, where it is necessary to study out all particulars of quite a specific situation, these are serious problems which can have several solutions different from a solution found by a specific person. Finding such nonstandard solutions should be rewarded with a prize and then search for a prototype solution should be resumed.

At this stage, more emphasis is put on the work with a contradiction than with resources as it has been before, as well as on formulating contradictory requirements imposed on operational attributes of available resources, on the use of more general principles of dealing with a contradiction (splitting a contradiction into elementary components, forming a solution image and specifying it on the basis on effects), on the work with the abstraction/specification mechanism.

For better assimilation of the notions “attribute”, “attribute value” and the abstraction/specification mechanism, students are provided with information about morphological analysis, G.S. Altshuller’s phantogram, the “Three Whales” method (a fantasizing method proposed by V.M. Tsourikov), the method of focal objects, etc. which employ different mechanisms of transforming attribute values of different objects.

Both at the first and at the second stage of this group of lessons, I.L. Vikentiev’s "Viewpoint" game is employed. After solving a problem, students are split into small groups (2-4 students in each). All the groups are given a task to describe the known situation from the viewpoint of one of the objects of situation participants or witnesses. It is also necessary to find the “salt” that discriminates the given object from the remaining ones (some of its characteristics, parameters, or attributes) and determines its specific view of events.  While seeking for something special, students involuntarily analyze a large number of attributes of the object (resource).

The “Viewpoint” game is multifunctional:

• forming some skills of immersing deep into a new situation – the empathy method.
• thoroughly analyzing object's resources, separating a property from its carrier and transferring this property to oneself or another object.
  Figuratively speaking, learning to separate the grin (one of the Cheshire Cat’s attributes) from Cheshire Cat itself (resource – attribute carrier). It is one of the most important properties of nontrivial thinking.

A series of short stories written in the name of the dwellers of E.A. Gridneva’s kitchen may be useful here especially when supplemented with stories written in the name of objects other than a human being.

For example, a story written in the name of granulated sugar poured into a sugar bowl, lying on a slice of bread and butter or spilt on a table. Not in the name of one of these groups of sugar granules, not in the name of one of the granules but in the name of all of them as an organic whole, in the name of all of them in the aggregate. Because they are all one and the same object!

Or another short story which is written in the name of all the air, the entire atmosphere of a kitchen or a planet, which contains all this inside itself, but not in the name of some local small volume.

Or, recurring to the short stories by E.A. Girdneva, it is not a bad idea to supplement the description of a broom that lives in the kitchen with some behavior peculiarities characteristic of a brush construction (a bunch of branches, not a single branch, but an organic whole composed of a large number of branches). Such stories can considerably improve the effectiveness of the "Viewpoint" game for teaching TRIZ.

The second TRIZ-TTSE-TCPE teaching stage starts after students have assimilated the basic problem-solving principles and mechanisms. This stage occupies most of the training cycle and is dedicated to mastering the nuances of using various TRIZ mechanisms and uniting them into a single complex employed for ARIZ-based problem solving. As mentioned above, the second stage starts before the end of the first one.

At this stage, TRIZ starts to be taught in the traditional manner but the "Yes-No" game continues to be used in a background mode.  This article describes the scheme of work employed with groups of engineers. If the workshop students are not engineers but teachers, children, businessmen or people of other non-engineering professions, the “Yes-No” game becomes the main tool in teaching TRIZ-based problem solving technologies all through the lessons. Irrespective of student categories, along with the game, this stage includes analysis of students' own problems or problems proposed by students. We do not stop using the game at this stage because:

1. The “Yes-No” game is a good trainer for practicing skills of using TRIZ mechanisms in work with real technical problems as well as skills of applying these methods to problems that are not traditionally within the scope of TRIZ.
2. The “Yes-No” game is as powerful a tool for developing strong thinking in any subject area as the methods of building fairytale plots used by G.S. Altshuller at his TRIZ workshops.

Especially useful are problems for the “Yes-No” game which involve use of physical effects. With their formulations having nothing in common with technology or physics, they make students to formulate contradictions many times (“multimove” problems), specify the initial situation, reveal subproblems, and analyze resources (their ability to perform required actions). As a result, these problems undergo such a strong transformation, that the resultant formulation has nothing in common with the initial one. This is useful because students come to understand that the problem under consideration is being constantly transformed until all subproblems disappear.

Completing the “problem – contradiction – contradiction-resolving" cycle by means of ARIZ (involving students into the work) will require several academic hours. Use of the “Yes-No” game allows repeating this cycle four or five times in half an hour. As a result, students become focused on the main line of work on a problem – search for, aggravation and resolving of contradictions; splitting a contradiction into components (by analyzing the attributes of available resources); synthesizing an abstract image of a solution and filling this abstract image with a specific content (based on the effects that are specific for a given type of resources, for the type of resources which underlies the systems described in a problem).

The “Yes-No” game is often conducted at the beginning of a lesson for distracting students from their everyday problems and focusing their attention on the lesson subject. Thus, strengthening the orientation toward the work with a contradiction becomes almost a standard operation at each lesson of the first part of a workshop. .

After fastening this line in students’ minds, a more detailed work may be started. Initially, it was performed by using ARIZ-85-В, but it turned out that the main ARIZ mechanisms could also be practiced on the "Yes-No" game which itself dictates which of the mechanisms should be used. For example, if you fail to formulate a contradiction, it is necessary to more closely consider resources and their operational attributes (operational zone, operational time, SFR (substance-field resources) and other ones, because problems are not technical).

Here is another example. If your have managed to formulate a contraction, this means that the work should be focused on contradiction-resolving principles. It will help producing an abstract solution image.

After producing a solution image, it is necessary, for the sake of concretization, to work with effects inherent in available resources, including psychological resources (if there are people involved in a problem).

Suppose, after resolving a contradiction and finding a specific solution, it becomes obvious that this solution is in conflict with one of the previously obtained solutions whereas these two solutions need to be used jointly. Then we have to tackle a new contradiction, etc.

This is virtually a normal process of solving a normal multimove problem. But using a non-technical problem where students' attention is not dissipated by secondary details helps a teacher focus on the method gist and demonstrates the TRIZ-based search field narrowing technique, which brings to the area of strong solutions.

The main effect, however, consists in that with such an approach students do not become rigidly bound to technology, which, in its turn, does not prevent them from using TRIZ in tackling non-technical problems (it was confirmed by students themselves).

Thus, before staring work with ARIZ-85-B, students are already acquainted with the general scheme of work on a contradiction required for adequate performance of some ARIZ steps. It becomes easier for students to understand and for a teacher to explain technical nuances of dealing with ARIZ and to resolve the contradiction formulated at the beginning of the article.

In conclusion, it is necessary to add that the strong thinking scheme is permanently used in the courses of the Minsk City Experimental TRIZ School as one of the main problem-solving tools and all topics are introduced through this scheme if possible.   All students’ problems are solved through contradictions, that is, by analyzing a problem according to the 18-screen scheme of strong thinking.

Properly speaking, learning to work with a contradiction on the basis of the multiscreen scheme of strong thinking with support of objective phenomena, effects and system (not only technical system) evolution laws adapted to a specific situation is the principal objective of the Minsk Experimental TRIZ-TTSE-TCPE School. 

By no means, hundred-per-cent success is not always attained but there are signs indicative of good results. For example, the facts that after a group of students has completed the course, there are usually some students wishing to continue this work on an individual basis or at least 1 or 2 new students come to work for the IMLab (and participate effectively in the “Invention Machine" project) indicate that the developed approach is sufficiently effective.    

Conclusions:

1. The “Yes-No” game is an effective trainer for developing the skills of using TRIZ mechanisms in dealing with real technical problems as well as the skills of transferring these methods on problems that are not typical for TRIZ.
2. The “Yes-No” game is also a powerful tool for developing strong thinking irrespective of subject area just like the method of creating fairytale plots used by G.S. Altshuller at TRIZ workshops.
3. These two technologies for developing thinking and problem-solving skills may become in future one of the most important means used at TRIZ workshops for students of various specialties.