For my independent study, I read Prof. Frank Biocca's book "Communication in the age of Virtual Reality". This book was written in the 90s which is quite amazing on what he has predicted to actually be true. In that time, the concept of virtual reality was not even seen by the public yet. This book contains a lot of professional papers describing a concept which is only doable in universities and militaries. Dr. Biocca realizes that this is a concept that will eventually be used in communication and a wide variety of field.

The book is still a good guidebook on understanding the history of virtual reality and how they can be used in everyday life. Also, some of the basic design principles are still the same despite all these years and with the full development of computer hardware, it is more likely to accomplish what they have been thinking of doing and applying them into the real life.

Reading the book helps me a lot in understanding the development of virtual reality and it also helps me into further research and building my own virtual environment. The design principles are used in my Final project on how to reduce and distract people's attention. Yet put more effort on how to make it more interactive.