Case study

Onboarding at scale: how Roche turned first-day overwhelm into engaged learning through play

The project at a glance

What if 150 strangers a month could become genuine colleagues, before they'd even found the coffee machine?

What if your first day at work meant absorbing a complex global value chain that connects research labs to patient care, while you're still learning names and finding the coffee machine?

Roche welcomes up to 150 new employees each month at their Basel headquarters, from firefighters to top scientists. Each person needs to understand how their role contributes to Roche's mission of "doing now what patients need next." But classroom lectures and PowerPoint presentations weren't working. Information was presented, but never truly absorbed.

We partnered with Roche to transform their Welcome Day. Make Your Mark combines a physical board game with augmented reality, turning abstract concepts into tangible understanding. Within minutes, complete strangers collaborate intensely, piecing together Roche's value chain while forming genuine connections.

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Every month, 150 new employees from around the world arrived at Roche's Basel headquarters for Welcome Day. Whether laboratory technicians or senior executives, everyone needed to understand how Roche transforms an idea in a research lab into medicine that changes patients' lives.

The existing classroom-style presentations weren't working. Information was presented, but rarely absorbed. New employees sat passively while complex concepts stayed abstract. In a room full of strangers, people focused on slides rather than each other. Roche decided they needed something radically different.

After a competitive pitch, we worked closely with Roche's talent and onboarding team through a six-month development process. Through briefing sessions and rapid design workshops in Basel, we designed the construct and shaped content to ensure every puzzle piece accurately represented a link in Roche's chain.

One major challenge was making the augmented reality elements flow seamlessly with the physical table design. We customized the Vuforia AR framework extensively, always returning to one core principle: create genuine human connection, not just transfer information.

Make Your Mark is a puzzle game where 3 to 6 players collaborate to unravel Roche's value chain: Pharma, Diagnostics, and Personalized Healthcare. Teams race to place 40 game pieces in their correct positions on a specially designed game table.

Each piece describes a specific link in the value chain. By matching pieces to slots on the board, players use deduction and discussion to build the complete story. An iPad acts as game master, guiding teams and unlocking augmented reality content that brings the process to life.

Physical puzzle mechanics: Players instinctively spread pieces out, read them together, and debate placement, creating immediate interaction between people who met minutes earlier.
iPad as adaptive guide: Provides context, hints, and feedback at the right moments, putting teams in control of their learning journey.
Augmented reality rewards: When a piece is placed correctly, AR content appears showing processes coming alive—validation and deeper learning with wow factor.
Hidden hint system: Color-coding and progressive hints ensure people at all knowledge levels can contribute meaningfully.
Circular design meets high-tech: Custom cardboard tables make the experience sustainable while housing cutting-edge AR technology.

The game was developed for simultaneous play on up to 15 tables with teams of 3 to 6 players, available in German and English to enable global scalability.

Why board game plus AR? Physical pieces force people to look at each other, not screens. Players lean over the table, hand pieces to each other, creating natural connection. AR provides dynamic feedback and visual representations—the best of both worlds.

Why minimal facilitation? Teams figuring things out together mirrors Roche's collaborative culture. This also scales beautifully: up to 20 teams can run simultaneously without 20 expert facilitators.

Why the race against time? Time pressure creates a "we're in this together" feeling, bonding new colleagues through shared challenge.

Make Your Mark fundamentally transformed how new Roche employees experience their Welcome Day, creating measurable improvements across engagement, efficiency, and satisfaction.

Some of the key results are:

60+ minutes saved

The game communicates the value chain faster than traditional presentations while achieving better retention.

1000+ new employees engaged

The game successfully onboarded thousands of new Roche family members, with up to 20 teams of 5 players per session creating an energetic, collaborative atmosphere.

Immediate connection

As one Roche team member observed, complete strangers were "within a minute fully immersed in the game and in deep contact with each other."

95% satisfaction rate

The Welcome Day experience achieved a 95% satisfaction rating, significantly higher than the previous classroom-based approach.

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While Make Your Mark was phased out when Roche shifted to remote onboarding during the pandemic, the project demonstrated that onboarding doesn't have to be passive information delivery.

The success showed that complex organizational knowledge can become tangible through thoughtfully designed interactive experiences, that strangers can form genuine connections when given the right collaborative challenge, and that better learning outcomes happen in less time when people are active rather than passive.

Onboarding at scale: how Roche turned first-day overwhelm into engaged learning through play

What if 150 strangers a month could become genuine colleagues, before they'd even found the coffee machine?

Want to transform your onboarding into an experience people actually remember?

When information doesn't become understanding

Teaming up to create an experience

Our solution: Make Your Mark, an AR-enhanced board game for collaborative discovery

Our design choices powering connection and retention