Retrieve relationships with get_posts()?

Is it possible to use get_posts() to retrieve relationships instead of WP_Query()? Does the relationship argument need to be modified in some way?

I’m running into an issue where either WP_Query() or wp_reset_postdata() is causing problems with other functionality. So I tried switching WP_Query() to get_posts() using the same arguments, but I get an empty array when I do that.

  $args = array(
    'relationship' => array(
      'id' => 'design_to_product',
      'to' => get_the_ID(),
    ),
    'nopaging' => true
  );
  // Query
  $related_designs = get_posts($args);
  print_r($related_designs);