IT IS NOT CALLED A WALKING STICK! If you are going to post a survey on something, please get your terminology right. It is called a cane.

FYI the reason you get pushback is because (as you’ll find if you search the sub) a lot of engineering students and others are constantly inventing prototypes of some sort of smart cane. However, this is done without first looking into the existing technology and issues with it (which blind people have written about extensively), the wishlist of actual blind people (which may not be for an annoying noisy cane so much as one that is sturdier, lighter, folds better, or whatever). While you’re right to want to learn from actual users (rather than just inventing something useless with no input at all), there’s a downside to just jumping in and quizzing blind people without doing your own research first.

Keep in mind there is, essentially, survey fatigue. People may get tired of being asked the same questions over and over every semester by some new student or students, but never getting followup, never seeing technology, never even knowing if their feedback was used or ignored.

Remember, you’re not paying people for their time to do this user research, so you should at least do everything you can to do your due diligence first. I think the pushback you’re seeing is largely that not using the proper term for the most basic and common of tech (and the tech you’re doing your very project on) suggests you didn’t do any background research. There are hundreds of YouTube videos about cane use, thousands of websites about the tech, about O&M (please google that abbreviation, it’s orientation and mobility), etc. You can learn a lot before trying to reinvent the wheel or improve on it with a fancy new square smartwheel.

Likely your project comes from a good place, so don’t take criticism too harshly - take it as an opportunity for education.

Have you looked at the different current canes that use technology?

lol this is fucking hilarious. Good luck kiddo.