World of IMEC
Hybrid Onboarding Experience
Context
IMEC wanted an onboarding experience that could work across both in-person and online cohorts without losing depth, interaction, or peer connection. The challenge was to design one coherent onboarding world that could hold the same content, energy, and team experience in both formats.
We created World of IMEC: a hybrid onboarding experience built around 27 interactive challenges covering IMEC’s mission, culture, ways of working, and more. Teams could take that same journey either through a physical challenge space or in a fully virtual environment.
Objectives
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Create One Coherent Experience: Design an onboarding world that works across both in-person and online formats without losing quality or impact.
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Make Onboarding More Memorable: Turn information-dense content into an experience that helps key messages stick.
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Build Peer Connection from Day One: Help new joiners meet and connect with each other across both formats.
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Turn Information into Discovery: Replace passive information transfer with active, team-based exploration.
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Cover Depth Without Overload: Help new joiners understand IMEC’s mission, structure, culture, and ways of working in a format that feels engaging and inspiring.
Format
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Hybrid onboarding experience delivered in both in-person and online formats.
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Built around 27 interactive team challenges covering IMEC’s mission, structure, culture, and ways of working.
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In person, teams moved through a challenge experience where interactive boards, team tasks, and custom IMEC-pedia posters turned heavy onboarding content into missions they could explore, discuss, and solve together.
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Online, teams explored a fully virtual IMEC environment where every room and challenge element was built around IMEC’s world
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Powered by Chatbot Nano, with QR-led or browser-based instructions, submissions, scoring, and a live leaderboard.
Activity Description
Exploring IMEC in the Room
In the in-person version, new joiners entered a large-scale challenge space built around 27 interactive team tasks.
The room itself became the learning environment: IMEC-pedia posters turned key information into a reference library, while interactive boards, cards, whiteboards, and props asked teams to investigate, discuss, record, match, and solve their way through IMEC’s mission, structure, culture, technologies, and ways of working.
Guided by Chatbot Nano, participants moved from challenge to challenge, turning onboarding content into something active, social, and memorable.
Exploring IMEC Online
In the online version, teams entered a fully virtual environment built to mirror the same depth and sense of discovery. Rather than watching a remote session, participants explored a browser-based world where every room and challenge zone was designed around IMEC itself.
Working together inside that virtual environment, teams completed the same kind of interactive challenge journey online: guided by Chatbot Nano, moving through themed spaces, collaborating in real time, and discovering IMEC through engaging missions rather than passive information transfer.
One World, Two Formats, Same Outcome
Across both formats, the goal was the same: help new joiners understand how IMEC fits together while helping them connect with each other from day one.
Whether teams were standing around challenge boards in a room or working together inside a virtual IMEC world, they were taking part in the same onboarding logic — exploring 27 challenges, building peer connection, and gaining a clearer picture of IMEC’s mission, culture, structure, and support systems.
The result was a hybrid onboarding experience that delivered depth without overload, and connection without compromise.
