Client

(Original post by CoolCavy)
OP you could do with narrowing this down a bit, 'sustainable lifestyle' is very broad and includes things outside of metal straws and tote bags. Have you considered a demographic for the product you will end up designing? Generally young people are more environmentally aware and consequently a lot of environmental products are aimed towards this demographic, arguably there is a gap in the older scale of the market that could be worth exploring. Another market to consider is that of disabled people, in general it is harder for those with disabilities or reduced mobility to use reusable products such as metal straws (dangerous for those with sudden jerks or tics and inflexible for those who cant reach a cup easily) and you could look at making existing reusable products more inclusive for those who are currently overlooked.
As a generalisation (you will find that DT is largely about stereotypes, categories and generalisations) current sustainable products have quite a feminine angle (lots of pinks and pastel colours), you could investigate male opinions of current products. Perhaps if there were more products catered to the more masculine end of the spectrum you could get more guys involved.
Ultimately you need to work out whose lives you are making more sustainably, if you try to be too general and target everyone you will end up targeting noone. You are also less likely to be able to find themes among answers if your target market is too broad, alternatively you may receive a lot of similar but quite vague answers (as it is i suspect you would get a lot of 'too expensive' and 'not readily available' answers which are quite hard to act on).
I would try to choose a demographic and then once you have done so create a survey with quite broad open ended answers, if you just ask closed (yes or no) questions you wont really receive responses that will be a springboard for your designs. You want to be asking about problems (which you are already doing just a bit too generally) because ultimately your product needs to solve a problem. If it doesnt add any value to an existing product or solve a problem with a new product then noone will have any reason to hypothetically buy your design.
Cost being a prohibitive factor to sustainability is something to consider but you need to be careful you arent going outside of your remit. Ultimately you are not fully in control of what supermarkets stock or the price of material, pricing considerations are something you need to consider when choosing materials but sustainable items are mostly always going to be more expensive. Your job is to make any added cost that comes with your product worth it to the consumer by adding value to that product they cant get from something else.
Try to look outside of the obvious as well here, things like plastic bags, straws and menstruation items are all quite well covered already. Try to see if another product or entirely new product could be designed in a sustainable way.

Best of luck, once you have your survey finalised feel free to post it here or in the student surveys forum and i'll be happy to answer



These types of questions are perfectly legitimate and indeed make up most of the questions (and my answers) in this forum