When I was in China, the last company I visited in Shanghai has been Lenqiy. This is another Vive-X company working in the educational sector and that has given me interesting insights into the educational ecosystem in China, that confirmed what I have learned speaking with Langzou and Judao.
I have been received by Mr. Heavin Mi, that with the help of my assistant Miss S, that translated the whole conversation, has presented me his company. I have to really thank Heavin for the time has spent with me talking about what he does and how is the educational VR ecosystem in China and also for having been really kind to me. He is a great person, for sure. And I have enjoyed speaking with him and testing his products.
Lenqiy is a Chinese company that offers own products and consultancies. Regarding the consultancies, they have offered solutions in a lot of sectors, from educational to the military, not to mention industrial, marketing and many others. I have seen screenshots of solutions they have developed for other companies and I was really amazed by the number of projects and the quality of the offered solutions. Furthermore, they have worked with great Chinese customers. The typical development environment that they use is Unity, but if the customer requires Unreal because wants a better graphical quality, they can develop using UE4, too.
The most interesting thing to talk about is, however, Lenqiy’s products, that are all aimed at the educational sector, especially the one related to kids from 6 to 12 years old. Mr. Mi highlighted his passion for using virtual reality to teach creativity to children and in fact, all four Lenqiy’s products are aimed at fostering creativity in children.
The four most important experiences are:
- Space Draw, that is a tool to draw in space inside virtual reality;
- Space Block, that lets you create 3D models by using colored cubes;
- Space Painter, that lets you draw graffitis on a wall;
- Space Code, that lets you develop easily using visual blocks and no lines of codes.
Maybe reading these lines you have in your head the same thought that came into mine when going to Lenqiy website: “But… ahem… Space Draw is a clone of Google Tilt Brush and Space Block is a clone of Google Blocks… ehm… why have you developed them??”. Well, I was brave enough to ask Heavin exactly this question and he calmly answered me that the reason is that they started developing these experiences before Google released its ones… and they had the bad luck that such a huge company developed its product faster and better than them. Of course, he said that after having tried Google products, they also took inspiration to improve their ones to try to keep pace, but this was surely a bad news for them. He also said that Space Code too is similar to a project of MIT and Google called Scratch. So, the only product that is safe after this Google attack has been Space Painter (but I think that Google has still time to develop that as well…).
He let me try all the drawing applications and I can say that actually, they are not clones of Google’s products. The reason is in the UX and the target market, two things that are also deeply interwoven. Lenqiy aims at fostering creativity in small kids, while Google wants mainly grown-up people and experienced artists to create awesome stuff. When Blocks has been released, for instance, I remember lots of artists sharing their awesome creations with Blocks: rooms, monsters, cars, etc… while I was barely able to create a big cube. Lenqiy is not interested in this: it wants kids to have fun and learn art with a VR app. When I tried Space Draw, that should be the clone of Tilt Brush, I felt it as a different app: the UI was more colored and cartoon-like and the available tools were less and easier to use. So, it was like a kids-version of Tilt Brush, absolutely not identical to the professional tool that is Tilt Brush. There were lots of similarities of course, but I think that for the purpose it has been designed for, Space Draw is surely better.
Space Block had a very similar interface to Space Draw but was meant to create simple 3D models by using cubes. Google Blocks lets you add various types of primitives (spheres, cubes, etc…) so that you can create better models. For the sake of simplicity, Space Block lets you instead only add colored cubes to the scene, so that you can stuff in a Minecraft-like fashion. I loved listening Mr. Mi talking about the multiplayer features of this application: so, for instance, the teacher and the students can be all in the same place virtually and create a 3D model together or anyone can create its own model and showcase it to his/her classmates. Currently, the created objects can’t animate, but this will be probably implemented in the future. I found it very easy to be used and I also loved its coherence with the other application, so that a little student that learns how to use one of Lenqiy’s apps can easily learn how to use all the other ones. Mr. Mi told me that this tool is not only good on its own but that it can also be used together with 3D printers to let kids create real objects. He told me that now even Chinese elementary schools have 3D printers, so children can learn how to create real objects by using Space Block. I was delighted to learn this, but I think I was more shocked to know that Chinese kids have 3D printers at school, while my elementary school didn’t even have a computer!
Space painter was the most innovative one: you are in a classroom and thanks to some colored spray cans you can draw stuff on the walls. If you’re good enough, you can draw everything using the sprays, otherwise, if you’re not a good artist (like me), you can get the outline of some cute cartoon figures, stick them to the walls and then use the sprays to simply color them. The spray has been implemented in a realistic way: so for instance, if you are closer, you get a smaller colored area, but with a more sharp color; if you are more distant from the wall, you get a bigger colored area, but with the color that appears lighter. It is cool that you can also mix colors: if you spray an area with yellow and then with blue, you will see that area becoming green. And the cool stuff is that then you can take that green with a color picker and spray everything with it. So, you can create every color that you want by mixing other colors. I had a lot of fun by trying this product: as a child, I would have loved having it. It really unleashed my creativity… and it was even this super easy to be used... I just needed some initial hints and then I went on on my own.
Regarding Space Code, I haven’t tried it, but I’ve seen a presentation video and I saw how it lets the user develop with a very simple block programming interface. Kids are too little to truly learn a programming language, so visual programming is what they need to enter the development world. He said that with this method, even 8yo kids can write little programs to command robots. Space Code is available for tons of platforms (mobile, ar, vr, etc…) and I found cool that its 3D interface lets the kid develop and in real time see the results of his/her program: there is a little virtual robot that in real time follows the instructions of the blocks, so that the kid can see if he’s programming in the right way.
Trying these experiences and watching the demo videos I especially appreciated the adherence to the target market: this is a company that aims at teaching to small kids, so all the interfaces are very simple, very colored and cartoon style. I’ve never worked in virtual reality applications tailored exclusively for small kids, so trying these ones gave me a lot of ideas. And it seems that also a lot of other people have appreciated this: Lenqiy has won various awards for these and other VR experiences.
As I’ve learnt by speaking with the other Chinese companies in Shanghai, if you want to sell to Chinese schools, you have to offer complete solutions, so also Lenqiy offers a complete package regarding education: they offer these applications, the training of the teachers so that they learn how to use these apps, the backend services, and also Yoop, a platform to let the kids share the videos and photos of their masterpieces with their friends.
I’ve seen Mr.Mi very satisfied about his company and the work they are doing: he was especially proud that teachers loved their products because let children express their creativity and also learn how to draw. He told me that using these VR artistic apps, the children also improve their drawing skills in general, even when drawing on paper. This is in my opinion very interesting and can open the door to drawing courses entirely in virtual reality…
I asked him about the competition. He said that he’s not afraid at all, because:
- There are few valid educational AR/VR startups in China, so at the moment there is room for everyone. This is interesting to discover because I thought that because of the huge investments of the Chinese government in VR, there were already a bazillion companies working on that. It seems that instead, the good quality ones are not that many;
- There is an increasing attention to VR education in China. In China, a kid has to be better than his peers since when he’s little: there’s an insane sense of competition there. This is why kids start doing some sports or learning some skills since when they are very little: so that they have more skills to be successful and prevail on the other ones. For this reason, there are also a lot of courses in arts for kids, so that they can learn how to draw and develop artistic skills that can be useful for their future. And if there is a school that can teach that using a new technology, this is even better for them and more parents will choose that school. This is why Lenqiy says that there are a lot of schools interested in their technology, with the market constantly growing;
- They are on the market since a lot of years, so they already have connections, customers and especially the feedbacks of existing users that have let them improve the applications so that they suit the teachers’ needs.
I asked him about the Chinese VR ecosystem. He repeated that in China now there’s a big push of virtual reality in education thanks to the government. And they are following the 5-year development plan of the government, adapting their product to these guidelines. Then he said that worldwide now the top countries for virtual reality are USA and China. He said that China is excellent for hardware manufacturing (even Oculus Go is manufactured in China!), while the US and Europe still develop better software. He advised me to not go to China to start a hardware company, because the competition would destroy it immediately, having already the technology and the customer relationships. On the contrary, he said that the software ecosystem is not top-notch, so a high-quality western software company could survive, in his opinion. Of course, competition is fierce in software, too, so it won’t be easy either.
The last question has been about the Vive-X. He told me that if you apply for the Vive-X to have money, you’re going to have a bad time (they’ll give you some, but not many). If you apply for the customers, the same. If you want technology, the same. You have to apply there because you are looking for someone that can guide you: it can help you to develop a plan so that your little local startup can become a big and international company. This is what has happened to Lenqiy: Vive-X mentors have helped this company in finding the right development process. Of course, they will also help you in connecting with customers and investors during this process.
At the end of the interview, I asked him if he was interested in possible collaborations with Western companies and schools and he said yes. So, if you work in the educational sector, feel free to visit Lenqiy website and contact them via e-mail (I can also introduce you if you want). Then I asked if he had questions for me. He asked me about Virtual Reality in schools in Italy and I was like
And with this post, I end my round of interviews with Virtual Reality companies in Shanghai. I hope you enjoyed them and that they helped you in understanding better the Chinese VR ecosystem. But it is not over… Miss S and I also went to Beijing and there we talked with other cool companies (like eye tracking company 7Invensun…)