Here’s my human factors solution to the crazy app badges that make it look like you need to open the app now. Solution - add a second badge for critical messages. Apple should refactor the badges¬ifications system to implement this.
This could also be used in a presentation of “examples of possible solutions”.
Good for people who fell into the smartphone abyss.
Nevertheless, I’m not going to get a smartphone and I recommend reading this before you buy one: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-reasons-not-to-buy-a-smartphone/
Nice idea! The yellowish colour you use makes a good contrast with the red badge and it makes me realize it’s more intruding than I originally thought. The red colour itself signals a feeling of urgency, although often times it’s not something urgent at all…A colour switch may be a good addition to this solution? Just to add on, I think it would be nice for the users themselves to decide what makes a notification urgent/important (I feel this can be somewhat complicated but it would be awesome to have that), and the colour of the badge can be customized by the users themselves.
Besides that, another solution is for people to shut down the notification/badge feature and that’s what I have done to most of the apps on my phone. 
@astra Hello and welcome to the community! Personally speaking, I know the negative consequences of owning a phone, but I look at it from a neutral perspective that is everything has pros and cons. Hence for me, it’s how intentional I am when I use my phone and always reflecting on whether the way I use my phone has contributed to my life in a useful way or not. It’s good to know people’s own perspective on the use of tech. Thanks for sharing the article!
Thank you for badging me! In the days I used a Palm OS smartphone, it had a flashing yellow badge in left-upper screen corner with bulb icon as well. I never had an Android smartphone or iPhone (although I was thinking to upgrade to Samsung Galaxy S/Nexus One after I dropped my Nokia N95), but I’m glad I have turned back to dumbphone country before I fell into smartphone abyss for good.
Saiyu, Thank you for the feedback. Ok, I updated the icon to change the colors, etc.
Who should we send this too? I sent it to the CHT people just now.
I think you could go even a step further and make the green or the yellow icon grey…but maybe that is not what you are going for.
As somebody that gets highly stressed by the bubble in general, I have turned them off completely on my phone and just check the app when I want to know. However seeing this triggered an idea. What if the count bubbles only showed on a long press? Then you could know as often as you like but not distracted when you don’t.
You could potentially have a long press pop ups that would show a short summary of only the urgent emails as an other alternative? I know it’s a little off track of where you started, but it gives you control and quick access when you do want to know.
EXCELLENT idea - That’s a great new UX trick. Pass it along folks