Value Proposition Canvas
Check, point by point, whether what you offer one group of people matches what they are trying to do.
- Time
- 45 min
- People
- 3–6
- Kind of work
- Frame · Test
In short
The Value Proposition Canvas is a tool for checking whether an offer fits one customer group. To run it, list that group's jobs, pains and gains from research, then list your products and services and how each relieves a pain or creates a gain, and finally mark which needs are met, which are missed and which claims need testing.
What it is
The Value Proposition Canvas looks at two things together. The first is a profile of one group of people: the jobs they are trying to get done, the pains that get in their way, and the gains they hope for. The second is your offer: the products and services you provide, the pain relievers that remove or reduce specific pains, and the gain creators that produce specific gains. The work is in matching the two. An offer fits when its pain relievers and gain creators answer the jobs, pains and gains that matter most to that group, not when it has the longest list of features.
The canvas is by Strategyzer.com and Strategyzer AG, and is described in the book Value Proposition Design (2014). It is protected by copyright, so this guide explains the method in words and uses its own worksheet rather than the original canvas. It is often used beside the Business Model Canvas, where it zooms in on one customer segment and the value proposition for it. In the public sector it works well for a new service, a new channel or a policy offer, provided the profile comes from research with the people concerned rather than from the team's assumptions.
When to use it
Use it when
- You are designing a new service or feature and want to check that it answers real needs before you build it.
- An existing service has low take-up and you suspect the offer does not match what people are trying to do.
- Several teams are adding features to one service and you need to decide which ones matter to the people using it.
- You have finished research and want a structured way to turn needs into the shape of an offer.
- You need to write the hypotheses for a test, starting from what the offer claims to do for people.
Skip it when
- You have no research on the group yet. A profile written from the team's guesses will only confirm the offer you already like.
- You want to describe the whole business or service model. Use the Business Model Canvas instead.
- The people you serve are so varied that no single profile holds. Split them into groups first, for example with personas.
You need
- Time
- About 45 minutes for one group and one offer, more if you compare two versions of the offer.
- People
- 3 to 6 people, including someone who did the research and someone who owns or delivers the offer.
- Materials
- Research notes or personas, the worksheet printed or on a shared board, sticky notes in two colours and markers.
How to run it
Step 1: Pick one group and one offer
Write down the single group of people you are looking at and the offer you are testing against them. Be specific: "households whose water use doubles overnight" rather than "customers". If you serve several groups, do a separate sheet for each, because their jobs and pains will differ.
Step 2: List the jobs
From your research, list what this group is trying to get done in their own terms. Include practical jobs, such as "stop a leak before it damages the flat", and also social and emotional ones, such as "not look careless to the landlord" or "feel in control of the bill". Put the jobs in order of importance to them, not to you.
Step 3: List the pains
Write what annoys, blocks or worries the group while doing those jobs: bad outcomes, obstacles, risks and costs in time or money. Make each one concrete enough to measure, such as "finds out about a leak only when the bill arrives six weeks later". Mark the pains that are severe and frequent.
Step 4: List the gains
Write the outcomes and benefits the group wants, including ones they would not ask for but would welcome. Again, be concrete: "knows within a day if something is wrong" is more useful than "peace of mind". Mark the gains that matter most.
Step 5: Describe the offer
Now turn to the offer. List the products and services in the offer, then, for each, write the pain relievers (which pain it removes or reduces, and how) and the gain creators (which gain it produces, and how). Write each reliever and creator so it points to a named pain or gain. Anything that points at nothing is a feature without a reason.
Step 6: Check the fit
Go back through the marked jobs, pains and gains one at a time and draw a line to whatever in the offer answers it. Note three things on the fit check: important needs with no answer, parts of the offer that answer nothing important, and answers that only work if a claim is true. Be honest. A good fit covers a few important needs well rather than every need weakly.
Step 7: Turn claims into tests
For the two or three claims the fit depends on most, write a short test: what you will put in front of people, what you expect to see and how you will know you were wrong. Record who will run it and by when. The canvas is a hypothesis until those tests come back.
Worked example
A national water utility serving about 2.1 million households had installed smart meters in one city and planned to offer free leak alerts by text message. About 7% of households had at least one hidden leak a year, often found only when a large bill arrived. A pilot had shown that only 18% of households who received an alert did anything about it within a week.
Five people met for 50 minutes: the customer experience manager, a metering engineer, two call centre agents and a researcher who had interviewed 14 households. They chose one group: tenants in apartment buildings who pay their own water bill.
Jobs included "stop the leak before it damages the neighbour's ceiling" and "prove to the landlord it is not my fault". The top pains were not knowing whether the alert was real, not knowing where to look for the leak, and not knowing who should pay for the repair.
Gains included "a bill I can predict" and "a plumber who comes quickly". The team marked the pains about trust and next steps as the most severe.
The offer was a single text saying "possible leak detected". On the fit check it relieved one pain, not knowing about the leak, and left the three most severe ones unanswered.
The revised offer added the hourly use pattern that triggered the alert, a two-minute check to find the most common leaks, and a printable note for the landlord. The team added a direct link to an approved plumber list as a gain creator.
They wrote two tests: send the revised alert to 300 households and see whether the share who act within a week rises above 40%, and ask 20 tenants to try the leak check and observe where they get stuck.
IllustrativeTips and mistakes
Tips
- Complete the customer profile before anyone mentions the offer. Starting from the offer bends the profile to fit it.
- Write jobs, pains and gains in words people used in research. If nobody said it or did it, question whether it belongs.
- Use one note colour for facts from research and another for guesses, so the fit check shows how much rests on evidence.
- Rank before you match. Fit with the top three pains matters far more than fit with the tenth.
Common mistakes
- Profiling a group so broad, such as "all citizens", that every job and pain becomes generic.
- Writing pains as the absence of your solution, such as "no app", instead of the real problem people face.
- Listing features as pain relievers without saying which pain each one relieves.
- Treating a good-looking fit on paper as proof, and skipping the tests that would show whether people actually value it.
What you walk away with
You leave with a written profile of one group's ranked jobs, pains and gains, a description of your offer tied to that profile, a fit check that names the gaps, and two or three tests for the claims the fit depends on. The next step is to run those tests. A hypothesis test helps you set what result would prove the offer wrong, and assumption mapping helps you choose which claims to test first.
Questions people ask
What is the difference between the Value Proposition Canvas and the Business Model Canvas?
The Business Model Canvas describes a whole model, from customers to costs, on one page. The Value Proposition Canvas looks in detail at one customer segment and the value proposition for it, to check whether the offer really matches that group's needs.
Can we use the Value Proposition Canvas for a public service?
Yes. Treat the customer as the group of residents, businesses or staff the service is for, and the offer as the service, channel or policy. The method works the same way, as long as the profile comes from research.
How many profiles should we make?
One per group whose needs are clearly different. Most teams start with the one or two groups that matter most to the decision in front of them and add others later.
Tool card
The worksheet your team fills in, one box per field.
- Customer jobs
- Pains
- Gains
- Products and services
- Pain relievers
- Gain creators
- Fit check