From the January 14th article "Here’s how math art inspired the mirror verse moments in ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’" by Ian Failes at Befores and Afters:
b&a: Tell me about that artefact, first?
Adrien Saint Girons: We designed that. That was, very bizarrely, one of the things that we spent a lot of time on. You wouldn’t think it, but it was a very time consuming process. It took a lot of iterations to come up with exactly the right look and the right mechanism for the box. There were a lot of changes that occurred. It used to be a much more mechanical kind of puzzle–I don’t know if you ever saw those Chris Ramsey [sic] videos online where he’s solving big puzzles. There was a whole backstory to it that got simplified in the end.
Can we find this guy??! #mcu #SpiderManNoWayHome pic.twitter.com/b4UjgYJ838
— Chris Ramsay (@chrisramsay52) January 15, 2022