Site of the Month: DIRTT

November’s Site of the Month has been been awarded to Calgary-based SilverStripe Professional Partner, Evans Hunt for DIRTT.net. The site showcases innovative solutions for interior design and construction, and boasts a beautiful visual experience.

About Evans Hunt

Evans Hunt specialises in creating meaningful connections between people and brands through digital design. They have the experience of an established brand and the hunger of a start-up. Since the very beginning, everything they’ve done has been built on the new and the unique. They don’t just adapt to change, they thrive on it.

Project background

DIRTT is a highly innovative company. So innovative, in fact, that they were having difficulty articulating to the public they do. DIRTT, which stands for “Do It Right This Time”, is all about sustainable interior construction with the help of technology and a passionate, knowledgeable team.

What began as an ask to create a digital strategy that would enable them to properly communicate their brand and value proposition, quickly turned to a conversation about their primary digital resource—the DIRTT website.

The challenge

Evans Hunt’s goal was to showcase DIRTT and their extensive portfolio by creating beautiful visual experience without sacrificing site performance and speed.

Where DIRTT lives is uncharted territory, which is partially why very little language had been developed around how to express their value. There was a major disconnect around how to position them as a technology company that designs and constructs.

Creating a cohesive experience and communications plan that would make DIRTT easy to understand for the general public was the vital first step in bringing DIRTT to life online.

Evans Hunt’s solution

DIRTT is all about doing it right this time and Evans Hunt wanted the site to embody that notion through and through. They kicked the project off with a Google Ventures Design Sprint, getting to the bottom of the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of DIRTT and ensuring each element of what would eventually become the homepage was infused with DIRTT’s culture.

Responsive imagery and proportional text across display sizes ensured DIRTT’s work would look great on the entire site, no matter the device.

Evans Hunt's focus was nailing the fundamentals. They leveraged SilverStripe's cache functionality, and to further reduce unnecessary and redundant data, minified both CSS and JavaScript resources, creating a better overall experience for the end user. 

SilverStripe modules used

• dnadesign/silverstripe-elemental – Elemental allowed Evans Hunt to build rich, responsive, and user-friendly content blocks for use across the site.
• mediabeastnz/silverstripe-imgix – The Imgix module enabled the connection of SilverStripe's image manipulation template tools to actually process and pull images from the Imgix CDN.
• unclecheese/display-logic – Display Logic offered the ability to condense complex content authoring forms into more user-friendly interfaces.
• dmcb/silverstripe-html-minification – By processing SilverStripe templates into a minified form, the HTML minification module allowed Evans Hunt to bring down page requests by a few more bytes.

The results

When it came to creating a website that would reflect their point of difference, DIRTT’s presence in a number of industries created an exciting opportunity and unique challenge. They’re not an interior design or construction company, or architectural firm—they’re a little bit of everything with a strong technology focus.

In the end, Evans Hunt were able to support DIRTT in their mission to democratise design through a top-notch user experience, beautifully vivid imagery, and universal language.

Like what you see here?

If you’re interested in working with Evans Hunt, please visit their website or contact them directly.

Interested in becoming a SilverStripe Partner?

Check out the SilverStripe Professional Partner Programme.