"TRIZ Digital Assistant - Innovation power in the palm of your hand.
More design activity is taking place away from your desk, making it difficult
to access desktop TRIZ design tools in group meetings, over lunches or on
business trips. Now, TRIZ Digital Assistant puts the power of
systematic innovation in the palm of your hand. Conveniently enabling you to
solve technical contradictions anywhere you take your PDA. TRIZ Digital
Assistant offers you the power to quickly solve technical problems on any
hand-held computer running Palm 0S 3.0 or higher.”
"TRIZ Digital Assistant is designed for new and experienced TRIZ
users and is the official companion software to 40 Principles: TRIZ Keys to
Technical Innovation, by Genrich Altshuller, the creator of TRIZ.
"Use TRIZ Digital Assistant to describe a technical problem from a
numerically or alphabetically sorted list of engineering characteristics.
TRIZ Digital Assistant suggests the right inventive principles to help you
solve the described problem. Select any of the suggested inventive principles
to view a detailed description of the principle. There is also a built-in
glossary to conveniently reference the 40 inventive principles.
"System Requirements: Palm OS 3.0 or higher, 112K available RAM
"Compatibility: Makers of compatible Palm OS handhelds include:
Palm,Handspring, Motorola, IBM, Kyocera, Nokia, Samsung, Sony, Symbol,
Franklin Covey, and TRG. Supports Monochrome or Color systems"
All of the above is true. To put it simply, I'm disappointed. It offers a
nicely programmed summary of the Altshuller contradiction matrix and the 40
Inventive Principles.
The interface is attractive. There are pull-downs for "positive
characteristic" and "negative characteristic" with the 39 characteristics
arranged in either the original numeric order, or in alphabetical order.
Choosing one of each generates a list of the 4 elements from the Altshuller
matrix. Clicking on any one of them gives some additional text.
Example: If I were trying to improve the strength of an object without making
it any heavier,
I pull <Positive Characteristic> down to <14. Strength>, and <Negative
Characteristic> down to <2. Weight of a stationary object> and under <Inventive
Principles>, I find:
40. Composition of Materials
26. Copying
27. Dispose
1. Segmentation
If I then tap on 40. Composition of Materials, I learn:
a. Replace homogeneous materials with composite ones.
That's about it. No illustrative examples. No other broadening hints.
Physical Contradictions are not included, and I'm not sure why, as this would
take only a tiny amount more memory. Cross-referencing the Separation Principles
with the 40 Principles would probably help beginners a bit. It would be easy to
do with this particular program.
The difficulty I see is that fully experienced TRIZ-niks grew out of the 40
Inventive Principles a long time ago. They are certainly still valuable when you
are either in a hurry, or are teaching TRIZ to neophytes.
For TRIZ beginners, the examples in TRIZ software such as TechOptimizer™ or
in Innovation WorkBench™ or CreaTRIZ™ are what really get people solving
problems. So I haven't figured out which niche this fits in. Half my TRIZ texts
include the contradiction tables, and many have illustrative examples included.
So, I guess at this point, I'd save my $20 toward the next good English-language
TRIZ text.
