  The Lumiere Project centers on harnessing probability and utility to provide
assistance to computer software users. We review work on Bayesian user models
that can be employed to infer a users needs by considering a user's background,
actions, and queries. Several problems were tackled in Lumiere research,
including (1) the construction of Bayesian models for reasoning about the
time-varying goals of computer users from their observed actions and queries,
(2) gaining access to a stream of events from software applications, (3)
developing a language for transforming system events into observational
variables represented in Bayesian user models, (4) developing persistent
profiles to capture changes in a user expertise, and (5) the development of an
overall architecture for an intelligent user interface. Lumiere prototypes
served as the basis for the Office Assistant in the Microsoft Office '97 suite
of productivity applications.
