Whitney’s article, “Process, Not Portfolio“, came out today, and it’s a must read for both consultants and the people who hire them.

As a recent independent in the midst of building a personal portfolio — despite years of experience in content strategy, online marketing optimization, and UX and interaction design — I have strong opinions on this matter. There’s a lot of stuff I’d LOVE to share in an online portfolio, but I either can’t — out of respect for the client’s privacy or our contract — or choose not to, because I develop custom designs and strategies for companies with idiosyncratic needs.

Whitney was generous enough to quote me a couple of times in her article, but I want to share just a bit more of what I said:

If you’re like me, and most of your business comes from word-of-mouth or direct client poaching, you must be able to demonstrate — in the first conversation — that you know how to ask questions that force them to reevaluate their own assumptions about their particular problem and the solution they were expecting to buy or buy into. Once consultants overly commodify their work (the idiosyncratic end results of their process), the conversation changes to whether or not you’re the right “vendor” for them to purchase from the proverbial vending machine.

The great thing about having a large portfolio is that it helps convince people that they should talk to you in the first place. What it won’t do, however, is prove that you’re a good fit for the client, their culture, or the task at hand. A conversation about one’s portfolio can also distract prospects from what’s really important: uncovering the problem and explaining how specific tools in your process toolkit will solve it. Otherwise, it’s easy for the conversation to devolve into, “So, I see you haven’t worked with any companies in the wholesale veterinary nutraceuticals industry before.”

Here’s a short list of recent projects I can’t/won’t show in an online portfolio*: I can’t show you a multi-channel, integrated content strategy I did for a record label. I can’t show you the personas and wireframes for a site that’s in the process of being built for a company that’s rebranding itself. I can’t show you Facebook app I designed for a startup that hasn’t launched yet. I can’t show you the conversion optimization documents I’ve done for clients who’ve yet to implement my recommendations. So, unless I change my client base very soon, there’s a lot I can’t show you.

But that shouldn’t be a conversation-killer. Should it?

(*Of course, if you’re considering me for a project, I’m happy to present some of this work to you — in person or via live screencast. You just can’t take it with you, and I won’t post it online. Ultimately, I’ll be sharing my portfolio, as it were, in the form of case studies, because I think the results should speak for themselves. And by “results” I mean the impact to the business, not the design.)