The Creativity Diamond-A Framework to Aid Creativity.

There are many facets to creativity, and the topic has a profound impact on society. Substantial and sustained study on creativity has been undertaken, and much is now known about the fundamentals and how creativity can be augmented. To draw these elements together, a framework was developed called the creativity diamond, formulated on the basis of reviews of prior work, as well as the consideration of 20 PhD studies on the topics of creativity, design, innovation, and product development. The framework embodies the principles that quantity of ideas breeds quality through selection, and that a range of creativity tools can provoke additional ideas to augment our innate creativity. The creativity diamond proposed is a tool consisting of a divergent phase associated with the development of many distinctive ideas and a convergent phase associated with the refinement of ideas. The creativity diamond framework can be used to prompt and help select which tool or approach to use in a creative environment for innovative tasks. The framework has now been used by many students and professionals in diverse contexts.

Novel sound absorption materials produced from air laid non-woven feather fibres.

This research has investigated the use of feather fibres to produce sound absorption materials as an alternative to the oil derived synthetic plastics that currently dominate the sound absorption materials market. In this paper we show that clean and disinfected waste feathers from the poultry industry can be processed into fibres and air laid using commercial pilot plant facilities to form non-woven feather fibre composite mats. By varying the composition and processing conditions, materials with a range of different properties such as thickness and density were produced. The sound absorption coefficients of samples was determined using the impedance tube method (BS EN ISO 10534-2: 1998), using normal incidence sound between 80 and 1,600 Hz. The data reported shows that air laid non-woven feather fibre mats have improved sound absorption coefficients compared to other natural materials used for sound absorption for a given thickness, particularly in the problematic low frequency range between 250 to 800 Hz. We conclude that air laid non-woven feather fibres have high potential to be used as effective and sustainable sound absorption materials in aerospace, automotive, buildings, infrastructure and other applications where sound absorption is required.