Savi Rathi

Humor Relief: An App for Instant Relief

It is a well known fact that laughter is the best form of medicine. As proven through various studies, there are countless physical and emotional benefits of laughter that allow humor to be a successful coping mechanism for individuals going through a difficult time. Humor Relief: An App for Instant Relief is an application designed to relieve overwhelming emotions through the use of humor. The app contains a variety of content categorized by emotion, medium, and topic. The user is able to select the category they wish to view content in, filter out unwanted or triggering content, and easily share content with friends and family. Furthermore, the user can choose from three overarching categories: “Browse”, “Listen”, and “Read”. The content within these sections are pulled from various comedic sources such as Saturday Night Live, Tik Tok, Twitter, podcasts, and even articles. Through conversations with co-workers working with NBC Universal’s Late Night Shows, I have curated a wide variety of comedic content that provides the user with a deeper understanding of humor’s role as a coping mechanism while simultaneously relieving overwhelming emotions. Like its competitors, Humor Relief is not a social application. Although the app features some social elements, such as shareability of content, the negative aspects of social media, such as likes, are entirely eliminated. This eliminates all social stresses and anxieties, ultimately creating a safe, judgement-free environment for the user.