This mixed-methods action research study delves into the decision-making processes of students, with a specific focus on Arizona State University Housing as a case study. It also explores the potential role that Arizona State University Housing professionals can play in facilitating the flow of essential information to aid in these decision-making processes. Furthermore, it investigates how decisions are formulated in the realm of higher education settings as an integral part of this complex process. In this research study, a new web-based interactive game was created to furnish students with information pertaining to their college housing options. The study then gathered data from student interactions with this game to gain deeper insights into their decision-making behaviors. The findings of this study revealed that although students possessed a fundamental understanding of the implications associated with their university housing choices, various external factors and influences played a significant role in how they applied this knowledge to their individual housing decisions. Surprisingly, students exhibited unforeseen behaviors during surveys and interviews, shedding light on the intricacies of their decision-making processes. As an action research project, this study also provided the opportunity to explore how professionals make decisions in the design of the innovation. By documenting the design process, this research provides valuable insights into the tendency of university staff to adopt isomorphic patterns and their reliance on both student decision-making and research on student development as essential components of their decision-making framework. Based on the findings, recommendations for universities are as follows: (a) prioritize personalized and in-person communication with students to better understand their unique needs and preferences; (b) take into consideration the impact of external factors, such as the COVID-19 global pandemic, on students’ college-going behavior, and housing decisions; (c) intentionally integrate theoretical perspectives to inform and guide staff decisions, ensuring a more holistic and informed approach; and (d) counteract the tendency toward isomorphic decision making by fostering an environment that encourages competitive nonconformity, enabling innovative solutions to emerge.

Technology and society co-exist, influencing each other simultaneously and iteratively, in ways that are sufficiently interdependent that it can be hard to see where one ends and the other begins. A set of sociotechnical relations exist between and across society and technologies that structure the ways that people live and work. What happens to sociotechnical relations when technologies are introduced or changed? In this dissertation, I argue that key parts of the processes that link technological and social change occur in a liminal space between the invention of new technologies and their widespread adoption and integration in society. In this space, engineers, businesses, and users of new technologies imagine, explore, develop, and test new ways of weaving together technology and society in novel sociotechnical arrangements. I call this space between invention and adoption a testbed, which I theorize as an early phase of technological deployment where outcomes are explored and tested, and sociotechnical assemblages are imagined, assembled, evaluated, and stabilized. I argue that the testbed, which is often delimited in both time and location, should be understood, interrogated, and governed appropriately to anticipate and examine the possibilities of social disruption inherent in technological change and to design the relationships between technology and society to improve sociotechnical outcomes. To understand the testbed, I engage in a case study of the Arizona public autonomous vehicle testbed, leveraging a multi-method approach that includes public observations, interviews, a survey, and content analyses. Through this work, I analyze diverse aspects of the testbed and articulate how the work of testbed actors imagines, assembles, tests, and stabilizes sociotechnical assemblages and futures. The dissertation builds on the insights gained from this investigation to evaluate the testbed and develop recommendations about assessing the space between technology invention and widespread adoption. Ultimately, this dissertation concludes that testbeds are key places where futures get made and so should be given greater attention by theorists of innovation and by societies confronting the societal and ethical challenges posed by new technologies.