In a phone writing text is not as simple, but I also find looking for the right icon there tedious, so I hope there was a better solution. In contrast, imo it is easier to get muscle memory with a keyboard (cmd+space > "first 3 characters of app name") than with searching for the app icon around. I cannot imagine the case where looking around in the launchpad is better except with some app you use so rarely you do not know the name (but somehow you have muscle memory for where it is there?).

I use CMD+SPACE 95% of the times I want to open an app. The rest 4% I do it with `open -a` on a terminal with autocomplete (or `/path/to/apps/binary &` for some specific stuff), and 1% going through the `/Applications` directory. I never use launchpad.