Value Proposition Canvas for Udemy
Introduction
Udemy as an E-learning the platform, is considered to be a promising tool for individuals accessing education. The popularity of Internet education has led to a significant increase in the number of e-learning courses and systems that provide different types of academic services (Al-Fraihat et al., 2020). In today’s pluralistic society, E-learning can affect the way individuals communicate as well as acquire knowledge. Traditionally, accessibility to collaboration and communication has been limited to students in the same classroom or members in the same organization. Currently, collaborative learning can be promoted through the Internet and beyond geographic boundaries, and a wide range of learning resources available in different formats.
In this condition everyday companies design educational services to help costumers but a study by Simon Kucher & Partners found that 72% of new services introduced to the market fail to deliver on expectations. (Simon Kucher & Partners, 2017) The tool to intentionally visualize design and test how you create value for customers it’s called the value proposition canvas. In this blog post, we will examine different aspects of Udemy, as an educational service, in a value proposition canvas.

Customer profile in Udemy Value proposition canvas
The Customer (Segment) profile describes a specific customer segment in your business model in a more structured and detailed way. It breaks the customer down into its jobs, pains, and gains. (Book)
This part of the value proposition canvas consists of three segments that each contain particular elements specifically related to the service. Main customers of Udemy, as an e-learning platform, consist of three main users: Learners, Teachers and organisations, we will investigate each part base on the user research that conducted for this project.
– Customer jobs
Jobs describe the things service customers are trying to get done in their work or in their life. A customer job could be the tasks they are trying to perform and complete, the problems they are trying to solve, or the needs they are trying to satisfy. Jobs can be divided into three sections. Functional, Social and Emotional. Users related to Udemy have the following jobs:
It is important to acknowledge that not all jobs have the same importance to the customer. Most of the learner users want to learn new things that were related to your education and university and Learning a new skill for the future and then learners tend to learn online to achieve new skills that were related to their work. At least other users want to learn new things for self-pleasure and fun. On the other hand, teaching users tend to access more students,
To be more precise in each section Customer jobs will be as follow:
Functional |
Social |
Emotional |
I want to improve my existing skill |
I want to help my society by learning new things |
I want to learn something for self Pleasure |
I want to gain a missing skill to re-enter the workforce or |
I want to share my knowledge |
I want to use my spare time on something positive |
I want to get prepared for a specific test |
I want to help my society by Teaching social things |
I want to impress my friends with different knowledge |
I want to Learn STH to make me make a difference between |
|
|
I want to be a top student by using different resource |
|
|
I want to start my business someday |
|
|
We want to prepare our employees for professional skills |
|
|
I want to use my remaining cellphone data for sth beneficial |
|
|
I want to use my knowledge in a more proper way |
|
|
– Customer pains
Pains describe anything that annoys customers before, during, and after trying to get a job done or simply prevents them from getting a job done. Pains also describe risks, that is, potential bad outcomes, related to getting a job done badly or not at all.
Similar to costumer jobs, customer pains section has three parts that shows what barriers prevent costumers to do their jobs. These three sections, based on the survey in the Udamy case are as follow.
Functional |
Social |
Emotional |
Slow |
I |
Shyness |
Not |
Finding |
I’m |
Can’t |
|
|
Trusting |
|
|
Don’t |
|
|
Cannot |
|
|
I |
|
|
Not |
|
|
I |
|
|
I |
|
– Customer gains
Gains describe the outcomes and benefits your customers want. Some gains are required, expected, or desired by customers, and some would surprise them. The required gain in e-learning platforms, and Udemy as such, is getting and sharing the knowledge. The latter for teachers and former for students. The expected one base on the interview and survey is being top student in university modules and getting prepared for a job (as students), training expert employee (as partner organisation) and making some money out of it (as teachers). The desired gains in our case are The feeling of being positive, Influencing the others and being distinctive or having a better life quality. At the same time costumers can gain oppurtunities using our case platform that could surprise them in future like getting a reputation worldwide for teaching specific course, Starting a business base on the online studies or getting a dream job with specific courses.

Value Map in Udemy Value proposition canvas
The Value (Proposition) Map describes the features of a specific value proposition in Udemy business model in a more structured and detailed way. It breaks Udemy value proposition down into products and services, pain relievers, and gain creators.
– Product and Services
(Book) putting in mind Udemy as an E-learning platform which is designed in a responsive way, service are as follow. For students:
- Preparing the online courses
- having a course Overview, requirements, Description, Course content and instructor details for choosing the right course
- showing the Course description number of students which enrolled, ratings, reviews and Student feedback as a way to evaluate the quality of courses
- Announcement of new courses or updated courses
And some extra features like:
- Note-taking system
- Transcript over the videos
- Bookmark making feature
- communicate with instructor in Q/A
For teachers:
- Teaching them how to make good videos
- Build their own audience
- Creating a course and preparing it for online sharing in Udemy platform
- Advertising in platform to reach more customers
– Pain Relievers
Pain relievers describe how exactly Udemy services alleviate specific customer pains. The essential pain reliever in the Udemy service are 24/7 online courses which can be seen anywhere. This user-friendly educational service is prepared for every budget (and even some times free) with a wide range of topics. The medium pain relievers are providing courses are downloadable and are suitable for different users with different learning style and learning pace. And for the “nice-to-have” relievers, Udemy have been provided reliable review system and lecture review to make sure users will chose the right course.
– Gain Creators
Gain creators describe how Udemy services create customer gains. As with pain relievers, gain creators don’t need to address every gain identified in the customer profile, So these are the elements that Udemy can deliver: Regarding the students, Udemy has A to Z in wide variety of courses in different levels. It offers high-level professional courses. For teachers it has different types of advertisement, commission types and promotion offers.

