Before designing anything, I wanted to hear how people actually get to the mountain and where it goes wrong. I interviewed five people with different ski styles — a cost-conscious solo snowboarder who drives two hours each way, a parent planning trips for a family of five, a solo traveler who plans everything in advance, and locals living near the resorts. I kept the conversations focused on real behavior ("walk me through your last ski day, starting from when you left home.") That's where the honest pain points came out and the same themes kept surfacing: control and flexibility, real-time visibility, simplicity, group coordination, and the trade-off between cost and certainty. I also looked at how other apps handle similar problems — existing shuttle services, plus apps outside the ski world that nail time-slot booking and ride tracking. With the direction set, I mapped out the key journeys someone would actually take: booking a ride, viewing and tracking an upcoming ride, and changing or canceling one. I then put together low fidelity wireframes — so I could test whether the structure made sense before spending time on visual design. That turned out to be the right call: testing those early screens is exactly what surfaced the two key decisions that shaped the rest of the project.