A computing device generates a patent characteristic space including patent vectors having a first number of features. Each of the patent vectors represents a respective patent family of one or more respective patents, and each of the features represents a respective property of the respective patent families represented by the patent vectors. The device performs a linear dimensionality reduction on the patent characteristic space to obtain an intermediate characteristic space that includes the patent vectors having a number of features reduced to a second number of features selected based on the respective properties of the patent families. The device performs a non-linear dimensionality reduction on the intermediate characteristic space to obtain, and present via a user interface according to a visualization preference, a reduced characteristic space that includes the patent vectors having a number of features reduced to a third number of features selected based on the visualization preference.