PPL 15: New View of Consent
For our latest PPL15 essay, we revisit a pivotal moment in our organization’s history when we realized our research consent processes were insufficient. With an updated foreword from PPL research director Judy Park Lee, this piece reflects on the unequal power dynamics that can shape research and how we’ve worked to redesign consent practices to center participant agency, transparency, and care.
PPL 15: Good Tools Aren’t Enough
In our latest PPL15 essay, senior principal Andrew Eickmann reflects on work with New York City’s housing agency and what happened when step-by-step guides and streamlined information materials weren’t enough to shift behavior. What emerged was a reminder that human connection and trust in public systems play a pivotal role in whether a design succeeds.
PPL 15: Dreaming as Practice
Executive director Chelsea Mauldin traces Public Policy Lab’s origins from an early Medicare redesign project to the founding of a new public-interest organization at a time when “service design” barely existed in government. Reflecting on 15 years of work inside bureaucracy, she argues that innovation endures not through optimism alone, but through the ongoing practice of making big dreams plausible and real.
New View of Consent
How we realized our consent processes were insufficient — and how we’ve leveled up since then.
Good Intent is Not Enough
PPL Turns 10!
