David Minogue, a young Sorin Scholar at the University of Notre Dame, has demonstrated remarkable entrepreneurial spirit from an early  age, evolving from selling custom fish stickers on Gloucester beaches and experimenting with homemade perfume door-to-door to international acclaim.

Today, he co-founded Beached Boat Apparel—sustainable coastal gear inspired by beach-boating passion alongside lifelong friend Chris Brown—and leads Spade Product & Graphic Design, serving nonprofits nationwide.

His innovative PullPal invention earned a prestigious design award, complemented by over a dozen patents and roles at Heartland Footwear and Insulet. David joins us to share his inspiring journey.

GDN: Looking back on your journey—from selling Gloucester fish stickers on beaches at age 10 to earning patents like PullPal—what key lesson stands out most?

David Minogue: I have always loved to build. As a kid I spent most of my time drawing, building with Legos, constructing tree forts, and eventually teaching myself CAD and buying a 3D printer.

To this day the process of turning ideas into something tangible is the most rewarding and exhilarating feeling in the world. 

One moment that shaped me happened almost by accident in a ski shop in Montana. My mother was shopping and I was standing near the checkout area, a little bored, when I struck up a conversation with a woman named Emily who worked there.

During the conversation I mentioned that I liked to draw. She jokingly suggested I try doing some artwork for merchandise in the shop.

That casual conversation turned into my first design contract and later a flourishing design firm. Opportunities rarely arrive formally. They often begin with curiosity and conversation.

Today my work is more focused on engineering, product development, and software, but the same drive to create remains.

I find myself always curious about the next design adventure. Creation rewards curiosity. The willingness to experiment, talk to people, and pursue ideas often leads to opportunities you never could have predicted.

GDN: Walk us through perfecting PullPal—your award-winning leash device using a CO₂-triggered whistle to stop dog pulls—what was the toughest prototyping challenge?

David Minogue: The idea for PullPal began during a walk with my grandmother.

We were walking through the neighbourhood one afternoon when her dog suddenly lunged forward chasing a rabbit. The dog pulled so hard on the leash that she became frightened. What should have been a relaxing walk quickly turned stressful. 

I began experimenting with the idea of a leash device that could effectively and quickly interrupt pulling behaviour without hurting the dog. The concept eventually became PullPal, a leash handle that activates a whistle when sudden tension is applied to the leash. The sound interrupts the dog’s focus and redirects attention back to the owner.

I struggled for months refining the whistle mechanism. I built seventeen prototypes just to experiment with different triggering systems. Some whistles produced almost no sound, while others required too much force to activate.

Eventually, the mechanism began to work reliably. What started as a simple observation during a walk with my grandmother had turned into a functional device.

PullPal will now be brought to millions of dog owners around the world, improving the everyday experience of walking a dog.

GDN: How did projects like Delta Faucets or Senseware utensils influence your human-centred design approach?

David Minogue: My design philosophy is shaped by the fact that I am a mechanical engineer and an industrial designer.

Striking the right balance between engineering and design is difficult, but the products that achieve it are the ones that truly stand out.

Designers often approach products as creative expressions, while engineers tend to prioritize function, reliability, and constraints.

I once discussed this tension with David Kelley, the founder of IDEO and a pioneer in human centred design. Kelley himself is trained as an engineer, and he described the balance between engineering and industrial design as walking along a razor-thin edge.

Lean too far toward engineering and products become purely technical. Lean too far toward design and they can become beautiful but impractical.

Secondly, products are meant to be designed with the user, not for the user.

In inventing Hōldr, an assistive device that allows individuals with quadriplegia to perform daily tasks such as shaving or brushing their teeth, I worked directly alongside dozens of patients and researchers connected to The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis.

Observing how people interacted with assistive tools revealed problems that traditional design processes often miss. Many devices relied on complicated straps or Velcro systems that required significant dexterity to attach, even though the products were intended for users with limited hand mobility.

Breakthrough insights do not emerge from spreadsheets or design specifications. They come from working directly with the people the products were meant to serve.

GDN: What’s the role of AI in your CAD work for footwear, and how does it speed up innovation?

David Minogue: Artificial intelligence will reshape CAD, but the trajectory is very different from what happened in text or image generation. CAD data is fundamentally harder for machine learning systems to understand.

Parametric models contain topology relationships, constraints, and feature trees that define manufacturing intent. Training models on CAD requires significantly more compute and specialized datasets than regular language models.

2D to 3D conversion platforms like Vizcom allow designers to translate sketches into rough three dimensional forms almost instantly.

These models dramatically accelerate the early exploration process and are probably the most mature example of AI meaningfully transforming CAD.

In my own experimentation designing boots for Heartland Footwear this restructures our workflow.

A sketch of a sole structure or silhouette can quickly become a series of 3D concepts that can be refined, exported, and molded.

Designers can generate and physically test many variations before committing to a final direction.

Where things become difficult is deeper parametric modeling. Mesh modeling is relatively straightforward, but rebuilding geometry into editable parametric CAD with feature trees and constraints remains challenging.

In my experience, the best advancement for these complex problems is customized plugins through Rhino and Grasshopper.

For now, most AI driven CAD tools remain experimental. But they significantly accelerate ideation and prototyping.

Interestingly, despite the broader hype around artificial intelligence, AI driven CAD remains one of the least explored frontiers in the field.

GDN: Which of your dozen-plus patents are you most proud of, and how do they tie into your startups?

David Minogue: One invention that stands out to me personally is SenseWare.

SenseWare is a set of utensils designed for individuals who are blind or visually impaired. The project began with conversations and shared meals with several blind individuals. 

For someone without vision, locating food precisely with a fork or spoon can be surprisingly difficult. SenseWare introduces subtle tactile cues and guiding lines that help users locate and capture food more easily.

I have never made money from SenseWare, and that was never really the goal. The project was about restoring dignity and independence in everyday life.

Eating is such a fundamental human activity that most people never stop to consider how difficult it can become under different circumstances. Thoughtful design can quietly restore independence in those moments.

While many of my products connect directly to startups, projects like SenseWare serve as a great reminder that innovation is ultimately about improving human experiences.

GDN: What big milestones do you aim for with PullPal’s launch, Beached Boat’s growth, and Spade’s expansion in the years ahead?

David Minogue: Across all of my work, the goal is simple: build products that meaningfully impact people’s lives.

With PullPal the next milestone is bringing the product to a wider audience of dog owners. The real test of any invention is not the patent, prototype, or the pay check but how many lives we can impact.

I am actively filing patent applications right now for a new project that I hope will transform lives as well. We are building companies and projects from Wine products to shoes to Medical devices. 

None of this work happens alone. I am surrounded by extremely talented engineers, designers, and entrepreneurs who make it possible to move quickly between projects.

My work is spread across different fields, including consumer products, software, and CAD research, and without that team, most of it would never make it past the prototype stage.

At a broader level, my work is less about any one company and more about the ability to create. I feel incredibly blessed to have the skills, tools, and people that make it possible to take an idea and actually build it.

Not everyone has that. A lot of people have ideas, but they never turn into anything real. Most things are simpler than people make them. Take the idea, put it on paper, build it, and see what happens.

If this all goes well, the result is not just one product or one company, but a body of work. Things that exist in the world because someone decided to actually build them.