I think this is an interesting idea with some potential. Good job building something for people!
I'm sure you're not at this stage yet, but the best way I can add value is to offer a few design notes as you move forward:
- The alignment, especially around the form, is sort of wonky. "E-mail" is separated to two lines (at least in Chrome), and the "Schedule for delivery" button is neither left aligned or center aligned. The e-mail field is also way longer than necessary for an e-mail address.
- There is a bit of dissonance between the old-looking, message-in-a-bottle font and the highly rounded edges of the forms. I'm not sure which direction is better, but it seems like it might be better to either go for tech-looking or aged-looking than splitting the difference in this way.
- The background, which is a not-great quality, black and white photo of a woman in a bikini, is distracting and strange whichever direction you go in. I guess the beach is where you find messages in a bottle, but it just feels very confusing and distracting from the core product.
- The name, FutureMessage.me, made me assume that I was going to send myself a message. If I can, and am even prompted to, send a message to someone else, there is no future message being sent to me. I read the name like "message me", as in "send me a message." I don't think this is a big problem, but it's definitely not as good as it could be.
- I was able to enter a non e-mail, "asdf asdf asdf" and schedule a message. I wasn't given any feedback on the thanks page telling me the address, so if I mistyped an invalid email, I might end up waiting for 6 months and not getting anything. Would add a bit more polish to correct invalid email accounts, and also to confirm the email on the thanks page.
- The thanks page is obviously thrown together and doesn't make much sense. I don't understand who the person is, and why he relates.
- The explanatory text isn't very strong. Coming to the site, I get what it does, but I don't understand why I would want to use it. At least for me, I didn't have a response like "finally, I can send myself a randomly timed message!" I think it would help if you fleshed out some ideas for usage, something to hook me in and think "yeah, that's something I'd want to set up."
- I'd work on the colors. The all grayscale with just the two words in fire-engine red is sort of harsh and doesn't look very appealing.
- The stream-of-consciousness stuff at the end is interesting, but might need to be adapted into another form. I think you've started to reflect on what might be interesting about your tool, but I don't think you're communicating those reflections very well.
- The tagline, "Messages to the Future", doesn't add much to the name. It might be good to rewrite this.
- Because it's so simple, there's no reason to use so much vertical space. I should be able to use the tool without scrolling like I do now on my laptop.
- Having the background on the wrapper and pushing the wrapper to the left makes the grey background on the right look just like dead space. Either center the wrapper, or find a better way of relating the backgrounds.
- After making the more important changes, go over carefully the spacing and padding of the different elements to make it look harmonious. As an example, the space between the name (which shouldn't have a colon) and the tagline doesn't look right.
Had a few extra minutes, made a mockup of the more literal approach. Needs a lot of tweaking, and not exactly the right bottle, etc., but just something quickly thrown together to get you thinking:
I'm sure you're not at this stage yet, but the best way I can add value is to offer a few design notes as you move forward:
- The alignment, especially around the form, is sort of wonky. "E-mail" is separated to two lines (at least in Chrome), and the "Schedule for delivery" button is neither left aligned or center aligned. The e-mail field is also way longer than necessary for an e-mail address.
- There is a bit of dissonance between the old-looking, message-in-a-bottle font and the highly rounded edges of the forms. I'm not sure which direction is better, but it seems like it might be better to either go for tech-looking or aged-looking than splitting the difference in this way.
- The background, which is a not-great quality, black and white photo of a woman in a bikini, is distracting and strange whichever direction you go in. I guess the beach is where you find messages in a bottle, but it just feels very confusing and distracting from the core product.
- The name, FutureMessage.me, made me assume that I was going to send myself a message. If I can, and am even prompted to, send a message to someone else, there is no future message being sent to me. I read the name like "message me", as in "send me a message." I don't think this is a big problem, but it's definitely not as good as it could be.
- I was able to enter a non e-mail, "asdf asdf asdf" and schedule a message. I wasn't given any feedback on the thanks page telling me the address, so if I mistyped an invalid email, I might end up waiting for 6 months and not getting anything. Would add a bit more polish to correct invalid email accounts, and also to confirm the email on the thanks page.
- The thanks page is obviously thrown together and doesn't make much sense. I don't understand who the person is, and why he relates.
- The explanatory text isn't very strong. Coming to the site, I get what it does, but I don't understand why I would want to use it. At least for me, I didn't have a response like "finally, I can send myself a randomly timed message!" I think it would help if you fleshed out some ideas for usage, something to hook me in and think "yeah, that's something I'd want to set up."
- I'd work on the colors. The all grayscale with just the two words in fire-engine red is sort of harsh and doesn't look very appealing.
- The stream-of-consciousness stuff at the end is interesting, but might need to be adapted into another form. I think you've started to reflect on what might be interesting about your tool, but I don't think you're communicating those reflections very well.
- The tagline, "Messages to the Future", doesn't add much to the name. It might be good to rewrite this.
- Because it's so simple, there's no reason to use so much vertical space. I should be able to use the tool without scrolling like I do now on my laptop.
- Having the background on the wrapper and pushing the wrapper to the left makes the grey background on the right look just like dead space. Either center the wrapper, or find a better way of relating the backgrounds.
- After making the more important changes, go over carefully the spacing and padding of the different elements to make it look harmonious. As an example, the space between the name (which shouldn't have a colon) and the tagline doesn't look right.
Keep up the good work!