Count Both Sides
A value-proposition canvas — a square facing a circle, three regions each — where the two halves are written as pairs, so anything unmatched shows up instead of hiding in a list. Six fields.
Two runs of the same template. A clothing reuse service beside a shared boatyard — three items against three in every paired region of both, lining up first with first. Racked mast storage sits opposite nowhere to store a mast, which is what the form is for. Both runs put a paraphrase of the value proposition in the target-user band instead of describing the user, which is a redundancy the template should have caught.
Generated from this template with the fields shown above — every paired region holds three items against three, and they line up in order: doorstep collection opposite clear out clothes I no longer wear, tracking on every bag opposite I don't know if it gets reused or dumped, the impact receipt opposite feeling I did something real. The number badges carry the correspondence across the gap with no connector lines through the middle. The reference's baseline is unusual because it passed the fault I expected — its relievers genuinely answered its pains — and failed on arithmetic instead. Five customer jobs faced four products, and five gain creators faced four gains, so one job went unserved and one creator produced a gain nobody had asked for, and neither was visible because both sides were plain bulleted lists. A canvas drawn to expose exactly that mismatch concealed it. The fix is at field level rather than in a rule: the halves are entered as pairs, so the matching happens while you write and equal counts follow on their own.
Generated for this library
Input
Project REWEAR CYCLE - clothing reuse, a community service
Promise We help people with more clothes than they wear
pass them on without effort, and get something
wearable back
Jobs clear out clothes → doorstep collection · find
decent clothes cheaply → the swap rail · know it
helped → a receipt showing where it went
Pains reused or dumped? → tracking on every bag ·
sorting takes an afternoon → we sort, you don't ·
secondhand feels grubby → washed and mended first
Gains did something real → the impact receipt · cheaper
wardrobe → swap credit per kilo · know the
neighbours → collection is a Saturday stall
Accent one sage green on the pairing numbers
Returned 1 canvas · 16:9 · white, black line, one sage
left a bold square, split into three by two lines from a
central mark - products, relievers, creators
right a bold circle, split into three the same way - jobs,
pains, gains
pairs three each side, numbered 1 2 3, the counts equal
in every paired region
join one two-way arrow across the gap between the shapes
key a footer strip naming the three correspondencesYou fill in 6 fields — the braced lines at the top. Everything below them is fixed.
- 1The project, and its type
- 2The value proposition, in one sentence
- 3The customer jobs, each with the thing that serves it
- 4The pains, each with its reliever
- 5The gains, each with its creator
- 6The accent
Count Both Sides
Produce ONE image, 16:9 landscape: a value-proposition canvas. Follow every line. Replace only the FIELDS block; everything after it is fixed.
First — do you have the fields?
If any field below still has braces around it, stop and ask. Put all the questions in one short message, and show the example under each one so they can see the shape of a useful answer. Wait for the replies, then draw. Never fill a brace yourself: a value you invented is a value nobody asked for, and it will look exactly as considered as the ones they did give you.
Ask in whatever language they are writing to you in. Translate the questions and the examples; do not make someone read English to tell you what they want.
The examples are only examples. If someone answers a question, use their answer; never fall back to the example because you prefer it.
If the fields are already filled in, ignore this and carry on.
Fields — replace these six lines only
- The project, and its type: {a name, and a category}
- The value proposition, in one sentence: {one sentence}
- The customer jobs, each with the thing that serves it: {pairs}
- The pains, each with its reliever: {pairs}
- The gains, each with its creator: {pairs}
- The accent: {one colour}
The matching law
This canvas exists to find out whether one side actually answers the other. Its failure is that both halves get filled in separately, and the layout then implies a fit nobody checked.
The three regions on the left correspond one-to-one with the three on the right:
- Products & Services ↔ Customer Jobs
- Pain Relievers ↔ Pains
- Gain Creators ↔ Gains
Every paired region holds the same number of items, and the items line up in order — first with first, second with second. A reader should be able to read across the gap and see what answers what.
A reference run of this style filled both halves fluently and left five customer jobs facing four products, and five gain creators facing four gains. So one job went unserved and one creator produced a gain nobody had asked for — and neither was visible, because both sides were plain bulleted lists. The canvas was drawn to reveal exactly that mismatch and instead concealed it.
An unmatched item is a finding, not a formatting problem. If a pain has no reliever, print the pain and leave its partner as a small open dash. A visible gap is the most useful thing this diagram can give you.
The shapes
- Left: a square in heavy black line, the value map.
- Right: a circle in heavy black line, the customer profile, about the same area, vertically centred, level with the square.
- Between them, one horizontal two-way arrow.
- Each shape has a small circular mark at its centre — a product symbol on the left, a simple figure on the right — with two thin lines running from that centre to opposite corners or edges, dividing the interior into three regions.
The regions
Each region carries a number badge in the accent colour, a heading in two lines (the name, then its English if given), a small line icon, and its items as short bullets.
The number badges are the correspondence: 1 on Products and 1 on Jobs, 2 on Relievers and 2 on Pains, 3 on Creators and 3 on Gains. The same number on both sides of the gap is what makes the pairing readable without drawing lines across the middle.
Never draw crossing connector lines between the halves. The numbers do that work.
The header and footer
- Top left: the title, in two lines.
- Beneath it, two grey information bands side by side: the value proposition on the left, the target user and their core need on the right, each with a small label at its left end.
- Foot: a single strip listing the three correspondences, each with its number, the two region names, and a double-headed arrow between them.
Content rules
- Jobs are tasks, phrased as things somebody is trying to get done. "Simple and safe" is a criterion and does not belong in the jobs list.
- Short, concrete, specific phrases. No slogans.
- Nothing invented. No statistics, percentages, sample sizes, market shares, quoted users, named organisations or research claims. Everything on the canvas comes from the fields.
Style
White or the palest grey ground. Heavy black outlines, thin black interior lines, mid-grey for icons and secondary type. One accent colour, used only on the number badges. Modern sans throughout, clear size steps, generous white space, everything geometrically aligned.
No stacked cards, no illustration, no photographs, no dashboards, no gradients, no shadows.
Never
- ✕ unequal numbers of items in a paired region
- ✕ an unmatched item hidden in a list instead of shown as a gap
- ✕ connector lines crossing between the two shapes
- ✕ a criterion or a feeling written as a customer job
- ✕ statistics, quotes, named organisations or research claims
- ✕ a second accent colour, gradients or drop shadows
The result
A canvas you could act on: two halves written as pairs, the same count on both sides of every pairing, and any place where the offer does not yet answer the need left visibly open instead of quietly filled.
The whole template, in one piece. The steps below are the entire workflow.
How to use it
- Copy the whole template with the button above.
- Replace the six FIELDS lines. Write each pair on one line with an arrow between — the pairing is the work, and doing it in the fields is what stops a gap being papered over later.
- Paste it into any image-capable agent or model, in one message. One run returns the canvas.
- Count both sides before shipping. Equal numbers in each paired region, and any item you left without a partner shown as an open gap.
What you swap
- The project, and its type
- REWEAR CYCLE — clothing reuse, a community service
- The value proposition, in one sentence
- We help people with more clothes than they wear pass them on without effort, and get something wearable back
- The customer jobs, each with the thing that serves it
- clear out clothes I no longer wear → doorstep collection · find decent clothes cheaply → the swap rail · know it actually helped → a receipt showing where it went
- The pains, each with its reliever
- I don't know if it gets reused or dumped → tracking on every bag · sorting takes a whole afternoon → we sort, you don't · secondhand feels grubby → everything washed and mended first
- The gains, each with its creator
- feeling I did something real → the impact receipt · cheaper wardrobe → swap credit per kilo · knowing the neighbours → collection is a Saturday stall
- The accent
- one sage green, on the pairing numbers only
Before it runs
- Pairs, not lists. If you cannot name the reliever for a pain, that is a finding — write the pain and leave the reliever blank rather than inventing one.
- Jobs that are tasks. 'Simple and safe' is a criterion, not a job; 'clear out the wardrobe' is a job.
- Real research, or the honesty to mark it. This layout reads as fieldwork, and invented user problems in it are invented findings.
When to reach for it
When you need to check whether what you offer actually meets what someone needs: a product, a service, a programme, a pitch. Templates in this style let you fill the two halves independently, and a canvas with four answers facing five problems looks exactly like one where everything is covered.
What changes
- One research-grade canvas: a bold square value map facing a bold circle of customer profile, joined by a two-way arrow.
- The halves entered as pairs, so every pain is written with its reliever and every gain with its creator — the fields make the matching, not the reader.
- Unmatched items shown as gaps rather than buried, which is the entire diagnostic value of the form.
- Numbered correspondences across the gap, so the three pairings can be traced by eye.
- Black, white and grey with one accent, kept quiet enough to read as analysis rather than as a pitch.
Pairs with
- Say It OnceA two-by-two strategy matrix where the axes actually decide the placements and no element restates another. Six fields.
- Each Layer Takes Something AwayAn exploded axonometric that pulls one site apart into stacked transparent layers — kept on white and kept analytical, because the temptation is to render it dramatic and lose the drawing. Six fields.
- Every Region OccupiedA three-circle overlap diagram where every region you draw has something real in it — held to three sets, because four creates overlaps nobody can fill. Six fields.