Coaching the cognitive processes of inventive problem solving with a computer

The paper presents a research aimed at developing a computer framework to support the analysis of inventive problems according to the logic of TRIZ (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving). The output of the dialogue-based procedure consists in a set of terms, viable to speed up a proper knowledge search within technical and scientific information sources. A dialogue-based architecture allows to support also users without any TRIZ background. The proposed system, although still at a prototype stage, has been tested with students at Politecnico di Milano and at the University of Florence. The paper outlines the structure of the algorithm and the results of the first validation activity.