The Blank Page Syndrome (and why we reduced our list of themes)

It’s 8:12 PM. The atmosphere in the bedroom is that familiar blend of exhaustion and tenderness. You’re sitting on the edge of the bed, eyes feeling a bit heavy, thinking it’s the perfect time for a story. You open the app, ready to launch an adventure, and then—you hit a wall.

You find yourself facing an endless list of themes: outer space, the farm, dinosaurs, knights, pirates, the magic forest, the deep blue sea... You look at your child, who is just as hesitant. "What do you want?" "I don't know... dragons? Or cars?"

We’ve all been there. What should have been a moment of connection turns into a five-minute negotiation just to pick a setting. You end up choosing something at random, slightly frustrated, simply because you have to start somewhere.

The question of "too much"

While talking with families who use Alba Time, we noticed something curious. We thought that offering total freedom—the ability to create absolutely anything that comes to mind—was the ultimate gift. We imagined that the more options there were, the richer the story would be.

But the reality of daily life is more nuanced. When you get home from work, having managed homework, bath time, and dinner, your brain doesn't necessarily want to navigate a catalog of 150 options. "Analysis paralysis" is real—too much choice kills the choice, as psychologists say. For us, we saw above all that too much choice killed spontaneity.

We asked ourselves: are we really helping a child's imagination by offering them a 12-page restaurant menu? Or are we, on the contrary, turning a creative moment into just another administrative task?

Why we chose to limit options

This is why we made a decision that might seem counter-intuitive for a tech app: we reduced the number of base themes. We tightened things up.

We didn't do this to restrict imagination, but to give it a support structure. A child's imagination (and our own) often works better when it has a solid starting point. It’s like a box of building blocks: if you have every piece in the world, you don't know what to build. If you only have fifty, you suddenly become very inventive to make your castle stand up.

By offering broader, more evocative, and fewer themes, we allow the mind to settle faster. We avoid that lag time where you're scrolling through a screen instead of looking into each other's eyes.

How it changes bedtime

The impact is subtle, but it’s there. By limiting the themes, we noticed that personalization shifted elsewhere. Instead of spending time choosing the "setting," we spend time choosing the details that really matter: the name of the stuffed animal joining the hero, or that little bit of mischief the child did during the day that they’d like to see transformed into an adventure.

The app becomes what it’s meant to be: a spark, not an end in itself. Once the (simple) theme is chosen, the story starts, and that’s where the magic happens. The frame is set; you can finally relax.

Ultimately, Alba Time isn't there to replace the stories we invent, but to give us the necessary nudge on evenings when we’re feeling lazy, tired, or simply want to be carried away. And often, to be carried away effectively, the starting point needs to be clear, simple, and fuss-free.

We are learning to simplify, too. Because at the end of the day, what matters isn't having chosen the most original theme in the catalog—it’s just having been there, together, listening to the same thing.