Think of our future customers---Concept making

The first step to create a car of the future is to clarify the image of our future customers. What kind of life will they lead? What kind of feeling do they want to get? What do they long for? What kind of automobile do they want to have? We asked the participating students to ponder our future customers' profile in order to create the right vehicle for them. A variety of unique future customer images were created in their respective ways such as collecting information and analyzing it or drawing conclusions from their experience.

Explore ideas and shapes---Sketch development

The images of our future customers they created. Their life style or sense of value. When the image becomes clear, the participating students need to convert it into specific ideas and figures. A figure should be derived from one's "emotion". How do you create it with your feeling? To find the best solution, all students generated plenty of ideas and drew a good many sketches. At the beginning, they were puzzled by the assignment and wondered how to convert a concept into a shape or how to make a sketch. However, as they received guidance from our professional designers with experience and skills, they managed to improve their ability to express beyond recognition.

Materialize ideas / designs ---Modeling

In this 1st Long-term program, to give the participants an opportunity to understand the workflow of car designing, we let them experience 3D digital modeling and clay modeling. Create cars they designed in their minds in virtual space. Or, create a small clay model. This program helps them to learn how hard it is to actually materialize the design you want. This physical model creation successfully led to the improvement of their rendering that they were asked to propose at the end of the program.

"5 minutes, "is the time given to each participant to make his / her final presentation. Within this short period of time, they have to present the images of cars of the future which they created spending about 2 months. Just like a real design presentation, the audience is "Product Chief Designers (PCD),"of major responsibility for design development by vehicle type. In the situation where even professionals get nervous, all participants made it in a unique and dignified manner. Also, we were impressed by their adequate reply to PCDs' comments or questions.

After the final presentation, Mr. Nakamura-SVP visited the studio of Nissan Offsite Internship. He observed each student's work one by one carefully and gave advice to every one of them. Even among professional designers in Nissan, not so many have an opportunity to receive comments from him directly. We hope and believe this will be a wonderful experience for the students. If this internship provided any one of the participants with a chance to keep making efforts with passion, "I want to and will be a car designer in the future!!", and to have a positive effect on those around, it would be a great pleasure and we could not ask for more.