Is essence a measure of maintainability?

We recently published a paper at ECOOP presenting a new software design metric, essence, that quantifies the amount of indirection in a software design. The reviews were overwhelmingly positive and included statements such as “The evaluation of the metric is fantastic.” However, we also received feedback from senior researchers who do not believe that we have meaningfully evaluated our metric. This paper represents our effort towards a meaningful evaluation of essence. Given our lack of experience in human-subject studies, we hope to receive valuable feedback on our proposed study design.