The most attractive teaching method is a game. We propose a design of an interactive game for children and adults. This game will teach you invention principles without boring lectures and tests. This is a self-righting toy doll that is impossible to lay because its center of gravity is always below the center of swinging. Instead of lying, it amusingly sways to and fro. There are a lot of methods to make the self-righting toy doll sway.
The interactive game's design is based on a real game. It was thought up and successfully used in teaching by Nelly Kozyreva, a game psychologist and TRIZ-specialist from Belarus. She collected a quantity of patents devoted to the improvement of self-righting toy dolls and it became clear that each of those inventions was based on one of the 40 invention principles that were revealed and described by G.Altshuller, the founder of TRIZ. At her lessons, Nelly shows a series of patented self-righting toy dolls and explains how they work and which principle underlies this invention. Then her pupils invent a great number of new self-righting toy dolls by using the same principle. Their inventions are often much more interesting that those patented.
The interactive game is based on the same principle except that there will not be any real "leader" in it.


A player performs the part of the doll trainer. At the beginning of the game, he visits the pavilions and classrooms of the studio to see how the already trained dolls (senior pupils) bow. The behavior of the dolls can be controlled with the illusion of reality - they response adequately to the cursor action. One may learn the structure of each doll in order to understand its principle of operation.


Then the new trainer himself gets down to work. The dolls may be trained in accordance with the obtained orders (topical training) or in accordance with one's creative desires. The main thing is to enjoy the process.
The beginners are ordinary dolls of a simple structure - a head and a body with a displaced center of gravity. The trainer has to invent and to assemble a doll so that its bows and motions are different from the known ones, to endue the doll with a character, to work as a stylist - to choose make-up, a hairdo, and a costume. For this purpose, there is a studio with a huge depository of various products. All changes are immediately reflected on the doll's behavior. The creative stages may be saved so that one can go back to them again. The newly created dolls remain in the classrooms and you can compare the ideas and to see which is better - yours or patented samples.


The next level of the game introduces you to the laws of engineering systems development by using the same example of self-righting toy dolls. Besides, by studying the principle of operation of such dolls your child will get acquainted with some physical phenomena.


We have developed a prototype of this game. The prototype demonstrates the main idea and possibilities of the game. We offer cooperation to people and companies interested in the development of such a teaching game.
The prototype is executed in the flash (200 Kb). If you want to see it, but your browser does not support this format, you may download the flash-player from:
http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/

More detail:
http://www.triz-journal.com/archives/2002/08/a/index.htm.

Contact us by the following address: sym_al@mail.ru (Elena Novitskaya).