Maturity Retainer

… because user-centred design is a process, not a one-off project

A single, isolated project can set a lot in motion. But there's one thing it can't do: permanently turn a team into one that works in a user-centred way. The project is finished: audit, research, concept and design are done, the documentation is thorough, the to-do list is long, and the provider has moved on. The team: overwhelmed, or without the capacity needed to put the project's results into practice.

What's left is the question of whether the work and the effort were even worth it. And which organisation can really afford that? By that I don't just mean wasted spend on projects that miss their goals. Above all, I mean that organisations can no longer afford NOT to work in a user-centred way.

Because user-centred, accessible design is no longer just a nice-to-have, but a distinguishing feature with a demonstrable competitive advantage. UX maturity — the ability to think and design in a user-centred way — doesn't come from a one-off project. It grows through repetition, through practised routine and through support. The Maturity Retainer gives your team exactly this continuity: ongoing UX support in a predictable framework with clearly defined goals, so that your product design isn't just polished up once, but keeps improving.

What is the Maturity Retainer?

The Maturity Retainer is a regular, monthly-billed scope of work: a UX retainer booked as a quarterly or half-year agreement. Every collaboration starts with a trial month: only then do you decide whether, and for how long, you'd like to commit. It starts from one day per month, and so from €1,040 excl. VAT per month.

The retainer has one clear goal — Maturity Progression: raising your UX maturity step by step. The point isn't just to buy user-centred, accessible product design, but to learn and embed the underlying processes and methods within your own team.

Who the Maturity Retainer is for

The retainer is for any value-driven organisation, institution or public body — public or private — that wants to actively work on its ability to produce user-centred results itself. The support needed ranges from occasional experience design through ongoing design system support to UX strategy, depending on the scope of the retainer and on where your team stands today.

What you get: three concrete outcomes

A maturity-matched retainer works towards three concrete outcomes:

• A noticeably better digital offering both in how your users'experience it and in how your own team feels, finally able to decide on a solid basis rather than from the gut.
• A level of UX maturity that can carry ambitious strategies. With greater maturity, demanding initiatives can be delivered sustainably and strategically.
• A solid data foundation. Research groundwork and a documented, accessible product design create the basis for good decisions, and, where needed, for working with generative AI (Gen AI).

Retainer options und investment

With every Maturity Retainer, the first month is a trial run: together we see whether the collaboration fits and how much UX support makes sense for you and your team. Only then do you decide on a multi-month commitment, its length and its scope. After the trial month, each retainer can be booked as a quarterly or half-year retainer, billed monthly.

And because continuous collaboration is more predictable for both sides, the rule is: the bigger the package and the longer the booking period, the sooner retainer discounts apply. We also offer EDU and social-impact discounts for eligible organisations and companies. All options are available remotely or on-site (in the Rhine-Neckar region with no additional travel costs).

Maturity Retainer · Arrive

Scope: 1–2 days / 8–16 hours per month

Investment: €1,040 excl. VAT per person-day (PD)

For companies, organisations and teams that first want to try out whether a user-centred design process is right for them — and/or are working with a limited UX budget.

Example services:

• regular UX support in managing or scaling a design system
• pinpointed audits of existing products
• pinpointed feedback and consultation within a user-centred design process

Maturity Retainer · Grow

Scope: 2–4 days / 16–32 hours per month

Discount: 5%

For teams that want to actively and continuously improve a product using a user-centred design process and noticeably raise their UX maturity.

Example services:

• regular UX support in managing or scaling a design system
• audits of existing products
• continuous building of research foundations
• accessible, responsible and respectful product design for new and existing products

Maturity Retainer · Deliver

Scope: from 4 days / 32 hours per month

Discount: 5–10% (depending on booking period)

For teams looking for support within an agile product launch — user-centred, accessible, responsible and respectful — and who, in the same process, want to actively work on their own UX maturity and establish user-centred design methods within the team.

Example services:

• accessible, user-centred product design within an agile product process
• establishing user-centred design methods within the team
• continuous building of research foundations

Why the Maturity Retainer from Truly XD?

Truly XD is a Maturity-Minded Experience Design studio for value-driven organisations. Many UX services end at handover: an audit, a report, a project, after which the team is on its own again. The Maturity Retainer is deliberately built differently. We deliver user-centred, accessible design results and train your team at the same time. My goal is for your team to become more independent with every month, because Maturity Progression means the capability stays with you.

And the framework stays predictable: a defined scope, monthly billing, clear goals — no money pit, but ongoing UX support that fits realistic budgets and timelines. Exactly the delivery support you may have been missing.

The Maturity Retainer is part of Truly XD's UX capability-building series. Every offer in this series is designed to introduce user-centred design processes to organisations and teams — for the first time, where needed — and to embed them for the long term. They're deliberately compact, easy to access and closely aligned with one another, all to build UX capability. You'll find all the other offers in this series here.