I wrote this sentence
In our approach, we simulate the way a human user looks for data on a web page. We, as human, rely on the visual appearance of the page (fonts, colors, text or link density) and semantic cues or text signals within the content (titles, highlighted words, the meaning of specific phrases) to build an image of the content structure.
To differentiate between "we, as authors" and as humans, I use "we, as human", but it maybe is "we, as humans" or something else?
In general, are there more idiomatic ways to say "human"?
By the way, is "build an image of something" to mean "perceive", correct?
Best Answer
You are inviting the very confusion you're trying to fix when you use "we" first to mean the authors of the study and then, immediately after that, to mean "people in general".
To avoid this confusion, you could just say
We often say "build a mental image" to make it clear that we're using "image" figuratively.