Value Proposition Canvas for Designers: Customer Profile and Value Map

What is it, and where does it come from?

The canvas began as an extension of two blocks of Alexander Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas: value propositions and customer segments. Strategyzer, Osterwalder’s company, describes it as a tool dedicated to explaining how you intend to create customer value with your products and services.

Osterwalder published its first version on January 10, 2012, as the Customer Value Map (v0.8), and it was later renamed the Value Proposition Canvas. The book Value Proposition Design, from 2014, develops it in more detail. For a designer, its use is clear: it forces you to separate what the customer needs from what the product does, and to check whether the two fit.

What are its parts?

The canvas has two connected sides:

Customer profile (what is observed):

• Customer jobs: tasks, problems, or needs the customer is trying to get done. They can be functional, social, or emotional.
• Pains: obstacles, risks, and frustrations that come up along the way.
• Gains: the outcomes and benefits the customer wants to get.

Value map (what is designed):

• Products and services: what the company offers.
• Pain relievers: how the product reduces each pain.
• Gain creators: how the product produces or amplifies each gain.

A note on names: the labels “products and services”, “pain relievers”, and “gain creators” are the ones IxDF uses. Strategyzer explains the same thing in other words: what you offer, the pains it relieves, and the gains it creates. In IxDF’s figure the value map sits on the left and the customer segment on the right.

What does fit mean?

Fit happens when pain relievers cover the customer’s relevant pains, gain creators cover their gains, and products and services address their jobs. Strategyzer insists that fit is a claim to be confirmed with real customers. A well-filled canvas is a hypothesis, not proof.

That is why the canvas works best alongside research. The article on jobs to be done offers a framework for discovering customer jobs through interviews, which is exactly what the customer profile needs.

Why does this matter for a junior designer?

Because design decisions often start from an idea of what the user wants. A canvas forces you to write that idea in terms of jobs, pains, and gains, and to connect each screen with one of them. If a screen does not relieve a pain or create a gain from the list, it probably is unnecessary or missing an argument.

It is also a good tool for talking with product and business people. Many arguments about “what to build” are really arguments about who the proposition is for. To connect it with the product vision, see strategy and vision.

How do you build it, step by step?

1. Choose one customer segment. Strategyzer recommends a separate canvas per segment. If you mix them, the profile becomes an average that serves no one.
2. Build the customer profile first, without looking at your offer. A common mistake is writing jobs based on what the product already does. Start from what the customer is trying to achieve.
3. Write functional, social, and emotional jobs. Strategyzer lists focusing only on functional jobs as a mistake.
4. List pains and gains with evidence. Each entry should trace back to an interview, a support complaint, or a data point.
5. Build the value map. For each relevant pain and gain, write how the product addresses it. If you cannot find a way, the profile entry may not be relevant.
6. Prioritize and confirm. Pick the most important pains and gains and validate them with customers before designing.

IxDF recommends working on the customer segment first, then the value map, and reviewing the canvas regularly. That is a reasonable practice, although the six-month frequency is a recommendation from that source, not from Strategyzer.

When should you NOT use the canvas?

• When you try to cover every job, pain, and gain. IxDF warns that a business trying to address everything will likely do it poorly. Choosing is part of the work.
• As a substitute for validation. A canvas without customer tests only shows what the team believes.
• For products without a defined segment. If you do not know who the product is for, decide that first; the canvas cannot settle it.

If you are using the canvas to discover a product idea from scratch, the Lean UX Canvas article offers a framework more focused on hypotheses and experiments.

Example

Illustrative example: an invoicing app for freelancers who bill international clients.

• Job: getting paid without chasing the client every month.
• Pain: the invoice arrives in another currency and the client does not know how much to pay.
• Gain: knowing the exact day the payment arrives.
• Pain reliever: the invoice shows the amount in the client’s currency, with the exchange rate for the issue date.
• Gain creator: a notice when the invoice is opened, and an automatic reminder before the due date.

The canvas does not say which screen to design, but it makes clear which screen has no justification. If the tax settings screen relieves none of the pains on this list, it is a candidate to be left out of the first version.

Common mistakes

• Treating the two sides of the canvas as one, without separating customer and offer.
• Mixing several segments in the same canvas.
• Building the customer profile from your own offer.
• Focusing only on functional jobs and forgetting emotional and social ones.
• Trying to cover every pain and gain in the first version.
• Assuming fit without confirming it with customers.

Sources

• Strategyzer, Value Proposition Design
• Strategyzer, The Value Proposition Canvas
• Strategyzer, The Customer Value Map (v0.8), now called Value Proposition Canvas
• Strategyzer, 5 common mistakes to avoid when using the Value Proposition Canvas
• IxDF, Value Proposition Canvas