In some cases, you may only need to define a limited set of primary and secondary personas. It may be important to make the distinction between your buyer, user and influencer personas. But as you think through your scenarios, if you find groups of personas interacting with the environment or with other personas, you may need to define the group persona interaction and map the experience appropriately.
If you have experiences where individuals mostly don’t act alone such as attending an event, amusement parks or playing an interactive game, then you need to look at these group interactions across your personas. In these scenarios, needs and desires may be negotiated in a group, not expressed individually. If you are delivering a solution where your personas embrace the experience mostly when they’re experiencing it with others then individual scenarios for them matter less than what happens to with the group.
Let’s say you are delivering an experience to “the family.” The father and the mother may value different experiences but like to do some things together. Other activities, the parents may like to do with their children but some activities the children preferred to do without the parents. Boys and girls may value different experiences but like to do some together and teens may value different experiences than younger family members.
For this, you will need to create individual personas and walkthrough the scenarios to map the important interactions. And map these touchpoints with other personas to truly understand the journey and define, develop and deliver the best experience.
For the next time you are realizing new personas or updating your current personas, give some thought about group interaction.