Surveys and playtesting are the two standard forms of feedback. In both cases, you give people a seed or trigger to attach a response to, cause humans are way better at responding than coming up with an idea without a context.
Surverys work just as well as a pre-design and mid-design feedback mechanism as they do for a playable alpha or later design-refinement mechanism. A survey can be one question (like a forum thread) or several (like a more formal survey). Survey responses can be public or private. In general, to make a survey, you should start by doing a brainstorming exercise asking yourself what kind of feedback you want. Thought-webbing is my current most-recommended brainstorming method; anyone who doesn't know how to do that is missing out on a useful mental tool. It can also be useful to imagine what survey questions you might be asked about someone else's game, or to look at existing game-related surveys on the web.
From your initial post you sound like you might want to prompt for responses with small gif animations or videos of a game element, then ask the player, "How might you enjoy using this object within a game?" or "What does this object remind you of?" I didn't get a completely clear idea of what kind of feedback you want. Do you want the player's stream of consciousness while they are looking at your game for the first time? This kind of thing is a more standard playtesting topic, and is done by audio and video recording the player while they play the game. There's high-tech stuff like tracking the player's eyes to see what they are looking at on the screen, or lower-tech stuff like telling the player to talk constantly, saying everything that goes through their head.