Computer and computational scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) are studying and designing collaborative problem solving environments (CPSEs) for scientific computing in various domains. Where most scientific computing efforts focus at the level of the scientific codes, file systems, data archives, and networked computers, our analysis and design efforts are aimed at developing enabling technologies that are directly meaningful and relevant to domain scientist at the level of the practice and the science. We seek to characterize the nature of scientific problem solving and look for innovative ways to improve it. Moreover, we aim to glimpse beyond current systems and technical limitations to derive a design that expresses the scientist's own perspective on research activities, processes, and resources. The product of our analysis and design work is a conceptual scientific CPSE prototype that specifies a complete simulation and modeling user environment and a suite of high-level problem solving tools.