I’ve been thinking about and pounding you in this blog with the idea of not wasting people’s time (also see here). I found out two things today, one is that I’m not the only one thinking about it, and, second that recent research says that in order for people to be happy they like to spend a certain amount of time on some activities.

Here are the so-called secrets of a happy life according to the research:

As you can see from the image, these are all simple things we take for granted on any given day. We mindlessly do them, and get pleasure out of them. But, what I think is interesting is that these activities will never get old.  Now, If you look deeper, these are all potential areas of value innovation. This means that you create a service or product that is directly conducive to one of these activities, which results in making the customer happier. What do I mean?

As an example, Nate Riggs explains that he’s willing to spend $5 bucks on inflight wi-fi because he can write a blog post, and do other things, while in the air so that when he gets home, he has precious time to spend with his family. And, this makes him a happy man. That’s value!

I’ll end with Nate’s quote on his blog:

Value innovation creates human emotion.

How do we design products, services and organizations that put human happiness at the center of everything that it does? Thoughts?