'mise en place' for game design sounds insufferably haughty
and it is, but it sort of accurately captures how I think about design sometimes. gather together a lot of interesting elements, set them down and start thinking about what the game could be with the different alignment and relations of those elements. I know people use noun-verb diagrams to similar effect, but I personally do not like the noun-verb framework.
I don't have a larger point here, but I just solved a long term issue by finding a different mode of presentation for an existing element. perhaps in the future I'll expand on this and without the tortured metaphor