NANO supermarket : using speculative design to catalyze a technology debate

The NANO Supermarket is a mobile exhibition, which presents specula-tive, debate-provoking nanotechnology products that might arrive on the market within the next decades. The products function as scenarios for potential techno-logical futures that invite a broad audience to discuss the impact of emerging nanotechnologies on our everyday lives. In addition to the traveling exhibition, we have created a website, www.nanosupermarket.org, which allows people to gener-ate a personalized technology profile based on choices for products they would or would not buy. This online personality test, based on product preferences, is made with the goal to create awareness and invite people to reflect on their personal atti-tude towards emerging technologies. Although the technology profiler, based on product preferences, must be positioned somewhere in between unsubstantiated horoscopes and thoroughly researched psychology tests, we aim to validate the model in this study. We found that 54% of the participants agreed with the tech-nology profile generated by the test model.