Meet the supplier: Online Department – a digital agency with a strong focus on UX.
In the video series Meet the Supplier, we visit the suppliers of professionals with whom we collaborate on a daily basis within our Striive platform. Who are they, what exactly do they do, and how does that collaboration work in practice?
For this edition, we travel to Rotterdam, where we speak with Thomas van Middelkoop, Managing Director of Online Department – part of Citizens.
Staying small is a deliberate choice
Online Department positions itself as the leading specialized UX agency in the Netherlands and Belgium, with a strong focus on UX research, UX design, and digital product development. Through thought leadership, deep domain expertise, and a premium agency approach, the firm helps organizations design user-friendly digital products and services.
With a growing focus on the public sector, energy, and sustainability, Online Department is further evolving into a Public Service Partner for government institutions and social organizations. In doing so, the agency combines strategic UX thinking with the deployment of experienced in-house UX specialists, researchers, and product designers.
The ambition? Not only to design the best digital experiences, but also to become the agency that clients, professionals, and partners want to stay connected with over the long term.
What Striive brings
That focus also has a practical side. As a specialized boutique agency, it’s not easy to naturally gain access to larger clients. Through Striive, however, it works. The platform provides access to assignments that would otherwise be out of reach. The collaboration has now been ongoing for about five years—long enough to get to know each other, align processes, and build on trust rather than contracts. It didn’t happen overnight: “The first year was exploratory and did not yet lead to concrete placements of our professionals. But by continuing the conversation and better understanding each other, trust gradually developed.” And that is now the foundation Thomas fully stands behind.
From reactive to proactive
According to Online Department, the collaboration could go a step further. Not just responding to individual requests, but gaining a deeper understanding of the market and even learning to anticipate it. By analyzing historical data, recognizing patterns, and also learning from moments when they are not selected, they can continuously improve and innovate. This allows them to keep refining their approach and, with high-performance professionals, increasingly align with the demand of tomorrow before it is even explicitly expressed. That is exactly the direction in which the collaboration is evolving.
Why this works
Ultimately, it comes down to the combination. Online Department brings content and craftsmanship through its excellent UX experts. Striive provides reach and the right connections. Both are sharp in their own role, and precisely because of that, they strengthen each other. In this video, Thomas shares more about this himself, directly from their own working environment.
