I, personally, clean out my email box to zero almost every day. But I know that this puts me in some 1% category of humanity — I’ve seen a lot of inboxes. And there have been months in the past where this didn’t happen.

As a designer, if you design a product that misperforms for 99% of its users then you are doing something wrong. Your tut-tutting saying, “Everyone is using it wrong,” just won’t cut it.

“You have unread email” is not a state that, for 99% of people, requires immediate action, and therefore, as the original article argues very persuasively, should not be using an intrusive and stress-provoking red color.