Google acquired Pixate, maker of a visual prototyping platform that allows designers to create test apps that run natively on iOS and Android devices, with its staff joining Google’s design team.

Pixate will also continue to be a standalone product “without any interruption to the service or support”.

“Pixate adds to our ongoing effort to develop new design and prototyping tools,” said Google, adding that the platform is suited for “creating complete app prototypes or crafting carefully choreographed interactions that look and feel completely real, and sharing them so entire product teams or clients can experience them right on their device.”

Google has its own platform for creating prototypes, Form 1.3. It said that this iOS tool is best for “advanced designers who want to break ground on new types of interactions, gestures, and animations on-device”.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“Pixate was started three years ago with the goal to make designing and prototyping native mobile applications easy and more accessible,” said its CEO, Paul Colton.

“Our small team has some really big ideas, and with the help of Google we’ll be able to bring those ideas to the design community at scale,” he added.

Following the deal, Pixate Studio, the desktop app for creating prototypes, has become free and the price of the Pixate cloud service has been reduced.

Back in 2013, Pixate announced $3.8 million of funding to “hire aggressively to expand platform support and develop for Android”, extending its reach from iOS.

Last year Google acquired Relative Wave, which uses Visual Programming Language to help designers and developers prototype apps.