Designers’ knowledge is organized around typological models. But each discipline has their own way of modelling their subject. In fact, each discipline has a set of modelling languages in which they work.
Not only the kind of modelling is different, the breadth or level of abstraction is, too. Designers’ model knowledge serves not just to understand the world, but it is a tool for creating new artefacts and systems. So the way a designer models the world (relevant precedent) depends on their goal and professional context.
Normal configurations are much more spelled out in aerospace engineering than they are in architecture or industrial product design. They can be because the basic structure of airplanes is much more stable over the years than that of mobile phones, for instance. The airplane engineers Vincenti describes are mainly engaged in “normal design” and the structure of their design knowledge reflects this. Architects explicitly aim to depart from established building forms. Their knowledge base, therefore, is much more fragmented and/or abstracted away from specific materials and structures. This might also be an artefact of the less extreme technical demands placed on their designs.
Airplane and –I suspect– bridge designers can become airplane- and bridge-ologists like a biologist can become an expert at insect morphology because these configuration are relatively stable. And they need to, because effective and reliable design of new instances require in-depth expertise. The form of their body of knowledge matches the job they are required to do.
Consumer product designers and architects have to deal with a much broader range of configurations, and can become expert enough within each project to come up with a trustworthy design despite their relative lack of expertise in library- or coffee-machine-ology as compared to commercial-airliner-ologists.
Whether they can or not, they need to, because the library- or coffee-machine-design industries aren’t large enough to sustain the same ecosystem of professional organizations, research & development institutes, and university faculties as airplane, bridge, and robot design are.
Designers’ knowledge structures aren’t just influenced, they are shaped in a fundamental way by social and economic contexts. And not just the content of what they know is socially embedded, the form of it, their ways of knowing are shaped by the context of their practice as well.