Visual Thinking Research

The first puzzle I did was Block Twins. You have to find the six pairs of blocked patterns. My strategy involved visually rotating the blocks in my mind. I used illustrator to help me mark any notes. But first I had to pick one part of the pattern and use that as a basis when looking for its twin. For example, bock A had an "L" shape. I just looked at every other block and attempted to find the same attribute. The next step was to find another attribute that matched. If it didn't match I moved one to the next block and started all over again. Marking them down helped with not getting lost and keeping track of what pairs were already found.
My friend looked at a certain shaped and changed her perspective/angle to find the similar shape. Her process was pretty much the same as mine. She didn't use illustrator or a printed document of the puzzle. She just eyeballed it in the computer screen and wrote down her answers on a pot it note.


The second puzzle was Colored Umbrellas. Finding the two matching umbrellas. I used the process of elimination as my strategy and again, using illustrator. First I looked at the first umbrella, examined one triangle with two colors, took note of those two colors, then checked each umbrella and searched for the same colored triangle. Once I found a match, I looked back at the first umbrella, and examined the triangle next to it, then checked if the other umbrella matched. If they didn;t match I would move on to the next. I did this repeatedly, eliminating any umbrellas that didn't have a match, until I found it. Later I just started to looked for grouped colors. For example a color that was next to each other in an umbrella, and used that as a basis. I found that method to be a little faster.
As for my friend, she basically used the same strategy, finding a similar attribute with the two same two colors, etc. But instead of using one triangle or grouped colors, she used the colors the were across or opposite side of the umbrella, backtracking back and forth when comparing two umbrellas until she found a match. She also eyballed the puzzle on the computer screen, same with the first puzzle, so no example of her process here either.