If anyone wants to get a PhD in this topic, let me know :)
An Information Foraging Theory Perspective on Tools for Debugging, Refactoring, and Reuse Tasks https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2430551
The paper applies IFT to software engineering, but IFT has also been applied to navigating websites or even physical offices. Use Scholar.Google.com to find a PDF of the paper if you don't have ACM access.
Can u point out any work on refactoring existing code for reduced code complexity?
Obtaining same (non)functional behavior using less code.
EDIT: i will read the CodeDeviant paper
CodeDeviant itself is a tool to help programmers perform manual refactorings without unit tests (in a visual programming language), so it may not be helpful for you :)