Author: Mieke

Marlieke Kieboom and I recently wrote a chapter for the book Futures in Public Management – The Emerging Relational Approach to Public Services, edited by Rob Wilson, Max French and colleagues. The book discusses the prevailing orthodoxy of public service management which is that it should be marketized, commissioned, contracted, managed, measured, and evaluated. Futures in Public Management introduces and develops the alternative argument that the objectives for and outcomes sought by institutions working with the public in contexts of health, care and welfare are inherently relational phenomena – they are always complex and cross-boundary, always co-produced by the individuals who experience them through interaction with those who are delivering them in relationship with those providing help/support.

In the book chapter, Marlieke and I explore what this means for the design of relational services. Relational public services require a relational service design approach, yet the complexity of this approach is rarely acknowledged, and examples of its application in public administration literature are few and far between. This issue challenges the design of relational public services: designing with the status quo leads to designs for and of the status quo. To bridge the gap, the chapter develops a new typology and practice of relational public service design. The typology distinguishes between designing for relational services and service designing as relating. The former emphasises the role of relationships in the service outcome of public service design processes, while the latter focuses on relating in the role and practices of designers who are service designing. An auto-ethnographic case study of Marlieke’s work in British Columbia (Canada-Turtle Island) illustrates this typology, but also depicts the challenge of designing relationally in a complex, non-relational public administration context, in this case a (New Public Management, NPM) paradigm. We demonstrate that public relational service design practice can not take hold as long as designers and public managers are not aware of NPM’s dominance, precisely because NPM promotes and requires ‘unrelationality’, creating a complex paradox. The book is available via Emerald publishers. A preprint of the book chapter can be accessed on Researchgate.

Relationships that reduce people’s time spent in hospital, relationships that support finding and sustaining employment, relationships that increase cycling safety, relationships that increase work engagement of teachers. In my research I have observed many times that public services and social interventions that effectively address complex societal challenges involve carefully shaped human relationships. Such relational interventions are becoming ever more relevant in times of individualisation, disconnect and fragmentation in a ‘world that’s pulling apart’ [1]. What can we learn from the way that these interventions have been designed? And what role do they play when addressing complex societal challenges?

In this blog post I will show:

• Why positive human relationships matter on an individual and on a societal level
• Why human relationships are often overlooked when developing interventions for complex challenges
• That we cannot design human relationships, but that we can design conditions that enable positive human relationships
• What we can learn from practitioners who embed such conditions in effective public services and social interventions

Read the full blog post on my Medium profile here: https://medium.com/@miekevanderbijl/human-relationships-in-complex-challenges-what-can-we-design-87657ca26db6

View at Medium.com

About the importance of relationships in (design) education, the problems of heroism, individualism and performance pressure, and the emotions involved in wanting to make a difference in a complex world. Really enjoyed talking to the wonderful Brooke O’Connell and Leon van Klaveren on the Designer Resilience podcast, a project led by colleague and friend Rebecca Price.

In your podcast app or the Resilient Designers website https://resilientdesigners.com/blog/podcast/navigating-complexity-with-mieke-van-der-bijl-brouwer/

In October of this year I was invited to talk at the Relating Systems Thinking & Design RSD13 symposium at Oslo School of Architecture and Design. The keynote can now be watched online here: https://systemsorienteddesign.net/rsd13-oslo-keynotes/

In the talk I shared a study on examples of services and programs that deal in a smart way with societal challenges. These challenges are often symptoms of fragmentation, individualisation and disconnect, and they require interventions that re-connect people to each other, to their purpose, and to learning and creativity. In the talk I showed how these interventions were all developed through a sophisticated design reasoning process which combines a deep understanding of human beings with systems concepts such as non-linearity and complexity. The keynote is a sneak preview of the book I am currently writing with the working title ‘Designing to (re-) connect’.

Creative professionals are increasingly involved in multi-stakeholder collaborations for social innovation, developing interventions to address complex societal challenges. Why do creative professionals and other stakeholders decide to participate in these collaborations, and to what extent are these expectations met? An obvious reason is to contribute to solving that challenge and to create value for society. But when working on complex challenges related to for example financial debts, healthy lifestyles or biodiversity, short term quick fixes are often not feasible and other types of value might be expected and experienced beyond societal impact. In this paper, Jotte de Koning and I present a study in which we investigated expectations and experiences of participants in creative collaborations towards social innovation, and found that in addition to value for society, people expected and/or experienced a wide variety of types of value – value dimensions -, including enhancing their professional network, learning, commercial value, and value for reputation and identity. Differences between expectations of value of participants could lead to various tensions in the collaborations, but we also found that some types of value, such as ‘network energy’, have the potential to contribute to future collaborations and to ‘continuous social innovation’. Conversations and reflection on expected and experienced value is essential for successful collaboration on complex societal challenges.

Co-author Jotte De Koning and I would like to thank all respondents of the ten participating social innovation projects for their contribution to the study, and we would like to especially thank Marie Van den Bergh and Eva Legemaate for their assistance. We thank Gerbrand Bas, Marjolein van Vucht and Federatie Creatieve Industrie for their support in conducting and coordinating the study. We received very valuable feedback from Jo van Engelen and the editors and reviewers of She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation. The research was funded by CLICKNL.

#socialinnovation #complexity #design #creativeindustries

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405872624000765

My name is Mieke van der Bijl-Brouwer and I am a self-employed researcher, speaker, author and teacher with expertise in practices and ways of knowing required to design responses to complex societal challenges. I study these practices and share this knowledge through my publications, education and talks. As owner of Meerkat Consultancy I provide training and advice about various social innovation methods and practices to public and private organisations. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you would like to know more.

Last year, I was invited by Karyn Zuidinga and Rob Brodnick to talk to them on their Positive Turbulence podcast. In the episode, Karyn and Rob explain, “we delve into the intricate world of systemic design. Systemic design merges systems thinking with design theory to address complex challenges not by dissecting them into smaller parts but by enhancing their interactions. Mieke explains how this approach can transform organizational behaviors and lead to significant societal shifts. From rethinking university systems for better student well-being to using visual tools for collaborative problem-solving, we explore how systemic design fosters deeper understanding and innovation. Join us as we uncover the potential of thinking in systems, revealing how interconnected perspectives can lead to meaningful change.” Listen to the episode here: https://www.positiveturbulence.com/podcasts/interconnected-exploring-the-world-through-systemic-design/

I recently left my job at TU Delft. At my farewell, I explained my decision and how it is related to my view on careers through a story that I wrote for my colleagues. You can find it here on Medium: https://medium.com/@miekevanderbijl/from-here-to-there-the-non-linearity-of-careers-41e7d0a208da

It’s about time we explained what we mean with ‘systemic design’. Four years ago we founded a Systemic Design Lab at TU Delft where we explore how systems thinking might support designing for complex challenges. Since the opening of the lab we have had many conversations with colleagues, students and other designers about what systemic design is and why we need it. We’re also increasingly being told it is a fad and that we are overpromising what it can do. Fair enough, we have probably not been very clear about what it is and what we claim it can achieve. So what is it that systemic designers design, why do they design these things and how do they do it? Well, that depends on who you ask. In this blog post on Medium, I introduce a few different perspectives on the topic