Whose Bag?

Used For 💡

• Practicing empathy and perspective-taking

• Strengthening observation and sense-making skills

• Exploring identity beyond roles and titles

• Building trust through curiosity and respect

• Training abductive thinking and intuitive judgment

• Early-stage empathy work in innovation and design thinking

• Helping teams adopt an anthropologist’s mindset

Group Size 👫

Groups of 4–8 participants

Total Time ⏳

20–25 minutes

What This Is 🤔

Whose Bag? is a collective sense-making exercise where a team explores one person’s inner world by carefully observing the contents of their bag — without the person saying a word.

The exercise turns everyday objects into data. Through storytelling, pattern recognition, and intuition, the group gradually constructs a picture of who this person might be: their habits, values, priorities, and what may be meaningful to them.

It’s playful and often funny — but also surprisingly revealing. The real learning lies not in being “right,” but in how the group observes, infers, and makes meaning together.

How It Works 🔩

1. Set the Scene

Participants sit around a table. Clear the table completely.

Ask for one brave volunteer to place their bag (backpack, handbag, laptop bag, etc.) in the center of the table.

Once the bag is on the table, the volunteer loses their ability to speak. They observe silently for the duration of the exercise.

2. Round One: Who Might This Person Be? (5 minutes)

The group slowly removes items from the bag and places them on the table.

As each object appears, invite the group to explore questions such as:

• What might this item suggest about this person’s habits or routines?

• What could it say about what they care about?

• What kind of person might own this?

• What patterns are starting to emerge?

This is a collective storytelling process. Encourage participants to:

• Build on each other’s observations

• Make tentative interpretations

• Speak in hypotheses, not conclusions

The goal is not accuracy, but shared sense-making.

3. Round Two: Sharpening Observation (5 minutes)

Introduce a second round using explicit observation lenses. Display or share the following prompts and invite the group to revisit the objects with fresh eyes:

Observation Tips:

• Look for things that trigger behavior

• Look for what people care about

• Look for patterns

• Look for the unexpected

• Look for hacks or workarounds

• Look for body language (how items are worn, used, or handled)

• Adopt a serving mentality

Repeat the sense-making briefly, noticing how quality of insight improves with intentional observation.

What You’re Practicing 🎯

• Empathy through observation

• Abductive reasoning and hypothesis-building

• Suspending judgment

• Collective interpretation

• Intuition and gut sense

• Seeing people beyond job titles and roles

Why It Works 🏗️

We rarely have full data about other people — yet we constantly make decisions about them.

This exercise trains participants to notice before judging, and to hold interpretations lightly. By slowing down and making sense of small signals together, teams learn how meaning emerges through dialogue, not certainty.

It also gently reminds participants that environments, objects, and personal artifacts carry rich information — if we learn how to see them.

What the Research Says 🔬

The exercise is a practical application of abductive reasoning, a concept introduced by Harvard logician Charles Sanders Peirce.

Abduction describes how humans make informed “leaps of faith” based on incomplete information — forming the most plausible explanation rather than a definitive truth. This form of reasoning underpins creativity, scientific discovery, and empathy-driven design.

The exercise also legitimizes intuition and gut feeling — not as guesswork, but as pattern recognition shaped by experience, refined through reflection and dialogue.

Pro Tips 🥠

• Ask participants to speak in “might” and “could” language

• Slow the group down if they rush to conclusions

• Model curiosity as a facilitator

• Remind the volunteer they can stop at any point

• Emphasize respect — this is exploration, not exposure

Common Pitfalls ⚠️

• Turning observations into judgments

• Rushing toward accuracy instead of insight

• Letting one voice dominate the narrative

• Forgetting to debrief with the volunteer

• Using the exercise too late, once teams are already polarized

Optional Debrief 💬

• What assumptions felt strongest — and why?

• What surprised you about how meaning emerged?

• Where did intuition help? Where did it mislead?

• How does this mirror how we make sense of people at work?

• What would it mean to observe colleagues with more curiosity?

The Takeaway 🥡

Empathy doesn’t start with answers. It starts with attention. By learning to observe environments, artifacts, and small signals — and by making sense of them together — teams build a deeper capacity to understand people as complex, meaningful human beings. That skill travels far beyond the table.