The addition, one of dozens slated to be released next March, was recently approved by the Unicode Consortium, a nonprofit that sets standards for the characters on keyboards and emoji. The bubble tea symbol is unique because it’s made up of coding for already existing symbols, which is how researchers won approval for its addition, said Ranjitha Kumar, assistant professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who led the team that proposed the new emoji.