The new ‘life-world’ in visual culture

The article is devoted to the analysis of visual research methodology using phenomenological concept ‘life-world’. The author considers basic socio-cultural principles of visual culture in the postmodern era, the theoretical grounds of ‘visual turn’, the manifestation of the simulacra nature through visuality and the design of items-images. The importance of the study is determined by the growth of visual content and the planet coverage by visual media. Currently visual studies focus mainly on such visual content as photography, billboards, and cinema; however, there is a new field for the development of visual methods - the Internet. The variety of designs and interfaces suggests the formation of a special virtual Internet culture that indirectly depends on socio-cultural characteristics of the creators of the project or the majority of users. The author conducted comparative analysis of two search systems - Google and Yandex - using visual methods to test the hypothesis that Russian users preference of the search system Yandex can be explained by a number of graphical and navigational features of the system suitable to Russian users. The results of the research seem to confirm this hypothesis revealing a number of elements of design and interface, which correlate with the cultural preferences of the inhabitants of the post-Soviet countries.