Microsoft has been touting connections between its Expression suite of design tools and its Visual Studio developer tool, and Adobe offers its Creative Suite and Flex tools, along with its upcoming "Thermo" technology, to help designers and developers work better together.

However, at the recent Google I/O developer conference, members of the Google UX team spoke on the need for designers and developers to work better together and said Google App Engine is the place for it. Google App Engine lets developers build and run their Web applications on Google's infrastructure.

To acknowledge how closely the two disciplines need to work together, Lindsey Simon, a developer on the Google UX team, said he was looking for a "design husband." Simon said he was quoting Simon Willison, a co-creator of the Django Python-based Web development framework, who had said, "I need to find a design husband."