TRIZ: A Creative Problem-Solving System
  1. Teaching
  2. TRIZ for Problem Solvers
  3. Reading and Writing Assignments
  • Teaching
    • Basic Ideas in Creativity
      • I am Water
      • I yam What I yam
      • Birds of Different Feathers
      • I Connect therefore I am
      • I Think, Fast and Slow
      • The Art of Parallel Thinking
      • A Year of Metaphoric Thinking
    • TRIZ for Problem Solvers
      • TRIZ - Problems and Contradictions
      • TRIZ - The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Available Resources
      • TRIZ - The Ideal Final Result
      • TRIZ - A Contradictory Language
      • TRIZ - The Contradiction Matrix Workflow
      • TRIZ - At the Movies
      • TRIZ - The Laws of Evolution
      • TRIZ - Substance Field Analysis, and ARIZ
      • TRIZ - Reference Documents
      • TRIZ - Games
      • Reading and Writing Assignments
  • Projects and Writings
    • The TRIZ Chronicles: Lawrence of Arabia
    • The TRIZ Chronicles: a Spotify Ad
    • The TRIZ Chronicles: Banff Wildlife Crossings
    • The TRIZ Chronicles: the O-Wind Turbine
    • The TRIZ Chronicles: the Amsterdam Bubble Barrier

On this page

  • Reading and Writing Assignments
  1. Teaching
  2. TRIZ for Problem Solvers
  3. Reading and Writing Assignments

Reading and Writing Assignments

Published

November 30, 2025

Modified

December 1, 2025

Reading and Writing Assignments

  1. I am Water:
    • Read Chapter 2, titled Classification of Games, from Roger Caillois’ book Man, Play, and Games. https://annas-archive.org/md5/b367135626629104fffa66c32d91defb
    • Think of several everyday experiences that you might have several times during the course of a week, e.g. Cooking, Cleaning, Doing Groceries, Reading, Listening to Music, Singing, Exercising, Commuting…
    • Describe one or more instances of such life experiences where you experienced each of agon, alea, mimicry, and ilinx
    • Did you modify such an experience, by infusing it with any of these elements? (e.g. mapping an exhausted letter in Antakshari to a relatively unused one, to make the game more challenging and interesting)
    • What were your realizations on such experiences and/or their modification?
    • What can you create with that Modification? A product, a service, a game, or a piece of art?
  2. I yam What I yam:
    • Re-read carefully the article from class, What is Cultural Capital?. https://culturallearningalliance.org.uk/what-is-cultural-capital
    • Think of a Life Experience where you were completely dumb-founded, you could simply comprehend what (almost) everybody was doing or choosing to do. Think ceremony, dress, gesture, behaviour, choice of word or phrase ( “think different”. Bah.)
    • What might have been the cultural grounding that you embody, that might have prevented you from (at least initially) comprehending?
    • How might you, in retrospect, modify your grounding to arrive at a better, and more rapid, understanding of what happened?
    • Is that same aspect of grounding, or similar, likely to affect you in the future?
  3. Bird of Different Feathers: To be Written Up.
  4. I Connect therefore I am:
    • Pick up Barbara Ann Kipfer’s Flip Dictionary, or any other dictionary
    • Randomly find a few Adjectives ( e.g. acerbic, diabolic, enchanting, ballistic, incendiary, colonial, motionless…)
    • Randomly find a few Abstract Nouns) ( e.g. mechanics, solitude, marketing, friendship, justice, ecology, …)
    • Again randomly, combine one adjective with one abstract noun.
    • Does the combination make sense, as a domain of work? Would the new domain have a language? What might a few words be that could be included in this domain-specific language? ( e.g. “forensic art” could, just, mean a science where one looks at paintings and find out precisely the historical period, season, time of year, and the phase of the moon on the day they were painted in, by examining minute details of brush strokes, pigments used, canvas weave, etc. Words in this domain might include: pigment analysis, canvas weave, brush stroke morphology, etc. )
    • Make as many combinations as you can, and make domains + languages out of them
    • Bonus points if you can name (with justification!) an expert from the Field that belongs with this new? Domain. (Expert can be a fictional figure too!)
  5. A Year of Metaphoric Thinking
    • Read one of the following (ha!):
      • Joshua Ferris, The Market Value of my Father, a metaphorical Short Story. (Web Link)
      • Primo Levi, Carbon, a metaphorical Short Story. (PDF)
    • List the Metaphors that are revealed in the work
    • Describe the source domain and the target domain for each metaphor you identify
    • Describe what attribute was carried forward from the source domain to the target domain
    • Comment, based on your own subjective experience ( aka CC ) whether and why each metaphor worked for you or not?
  6. Problems and Contradictions
    • Read the article, What are Problems?. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/pain-loss-and-suffering/202105/what-are-problems
    • Trawl through your Insta / Locket / Snapchat / Discord / Twitter timelines ( or whatever you call them), or stand-Up comedy shows, or meme pages, or any other source of short-form social media content
    • Find 3 posts or stories that especially funny or startling, or have people up in arms
    • Describe if there are two pole positions or contradictory forces at play in the post. (E.g. look at the Covid Healthcare vs Job Loss related Twitter post, and others, from class)
    • Describe how the posts uses these contradictions to create humour or surprise, or anger
    • Quote/Screenshot the Post ( or link to it if possible) in each case
    • Reflect on how you might use such contradictions
    • Create a ( Oh sweet God..) a reel, a post, or a story of your own
    • Less than 3 if you can create a meme that becomes viral in class, including your (elderly) Teaching Faculty.
  7. TRIZ Resources:
Back to top
TRIZ - Games
Projects and Writings

License: CC BY-SA 2.0

Website made with ❤️ and Quarto, by Arvind V.

Hosted by Netlify .