{"id":466,"date":"2025-06-30T16:28:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-30T15:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/miekevanderbijl.com\/?p=466"},"modified":"2025-06-30T16:28:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T15:28:13","slug":"human-relationships-in-complex-challenges-what-can-we-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/miekevanderbijl.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/30\/human-relationships-in-complex-challenges-what-can-we-design\/","title":{"rendered":"Human relationships in complex challenges &#8211; what can we design?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p id=\"7d2f\">Relationships that reduce people\u2019s 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 \u2018world that\u2019s pulling apart\u2019 [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?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"725d\">In this blog post I will show:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Why positive human relationships matter on an individual and on a societal level<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Why human relationships are often overlooked when developing interventions for complex challenges<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>That we cannot design human relationships, but that we can design conditions that enable positive human relationships<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>What we can learn from practitioners who embed such conditions in effective public services and social interventions<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Read the full blog post on my Medium profile here: https:\/\/medium.com\/@miekevanderbijl\/human-relationships-in-complex-challenges-what-can-we-design-87657ca26db6<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-embed-handler wp-block-embed-embed-handler\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<a class=\"m-story\" href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@miekevanderbijl\/human-relationships-in-complex-challenges-what-can-we-design-87657ca26db6\" target=\"_blank\" data-width=\"648\" data-border=\"1\" data-collapsed=\"\">View at Medium.com<\/a>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Relationships that reduce people\u2019s 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Human relationships in complex challenges - what can we design? &#187; mieke | van der bijl | brouwer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A blogpost about the importance of human relationships in addressing complex societal challenges and about what we can design.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/miekevanderbijl.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/30\/human-relationships-in-complex-challenges-what-can-we-design\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Human relationships in complex challenges - what can we design? &#187; mieke | van der bijl | brouwer\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A blogpost about the importance of human relationships in addressing complex societal challenges and about what we can design.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/miekevanderbijl.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/30\/human-relationships-in-complex-challenges-what-can-we-design\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"mieke | van der bijl | brouwer\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-06-30T15:28:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-06-30T15:28:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mieke\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mieke\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/miekevanderbijl.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/30\/human-relationships-in-complex-challenges-what-can-we-design\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/miekevanderbijl.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/30\/human-relationships-in-complex-challenges-what-can-we-design\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Mieke\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/miekevanderbijl.com\/#\/schema\/person\/911a1942130ea34ade4898ffbde125d9\"},\"headline\":\"Human relationships in complex challenges &#8211; what can we design?\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-06-30T15:28:11+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-06-30T15:28:13+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/miekevanderbijl.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/30\/human-relationships-in-complex-challenges-what-can-we-design\/\"},\"wordCount\":199,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/miekevanderbijl.com\/#\/schema\/person\/911a1942130ea34ade4898ffbde125d9\"},\"articleSection\":[\"Uncategorized\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/miekevanderbijl.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/30\/human-relationships-in-complex-challenges-what-can-we-design\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/miekevanderbijl.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/30\/human-relationships-in-complex-challenges-what-can-we-design\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/miekevanderbijl.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/30\/human-relationships-in-complex-challenges-what-can-we-design\/\",\"name\":\"Human relationships in complex challenges - what can we design? 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