Sometimes. Imagine if this is being used to generate something like a DOI or other catalog number for some data or physical artifact. As research scales up, the size of these identifiers also benefits from a more compact encoding.
These kinds of IDs might be printed in a research paper (perhaps in a figure caption or bibliography/reference entry). Then, someone might be reading this from a printed copy of the paper rather than a PDF with a link in it.
Or, researchers might be verbally referencing a particular item during some meeting. It might be recognizable among some peers actively working with the same artifacts, but might also need to be typed back into some search form to get back to online metadata etc.
Another place the same identifier might be is on a printed label for physical artifacts in an archive. Of course, you might also want something like a 2D barcode for scanning, but it is helpful to have something human readable.
I've always heard that the reason in another ambiguity (u/v) which makes more sense to me.