This article examines the Baidu Search team’s “One Orange” IP case, revealing why they shifted from a traditional, labor‑intensive pipeline to an AI‑driven process, how multimodal models, LoRA and ControlNet enabled massive innovation and efficiency gains, and what this means for designers and the broader industry.
This case study details how Baidu’s design team leveraged the WENXIN AI image‑generation model to transform the Baidu App’s avatar‑customization (装扮) feature, addressing user personalization gaps, simplifying workflows, and boosting engagement through three iterative phases of rapid testing, innovative breakthroughs, and continuous refinement.
The article explains what patents are, outlines the three types in China, describes their value for designers, and provides a practical four‑step workflow—discovering an innovation, evaluating its novelty, drafting the patent application, and filing—to help designers transform routine design problems into protectable inventions.
