I didn't like the Anki UI at first but I got used to it quickly. My Anki pace of 50 new cards a day was very aggressive, but this was largely possible due to the massive number of cognates between English and French. I imagine the same will hold for you in Spanish, though perhaps to a slightly lesser extent. I think Anki is wonderful for acquiring vocab though, so keep at it and you should do quite well! Also consider making your own Anki deck or using sentences instead of words. While this 5000 word deck was good enough to get to B2 for me, those methods are very likely more effective for long-term retention of more obscure words, although of course they are far more time-consuming.
Yeah I'll eventually build my own Anki deck. I'm spending a month in Mexico right now so that's definitely helping too :)
* using the desktop version of Duolingo
* the shared Ankiweb decks for <x> most common words in <x> language
I've been slowly learning Spanish via a few short classes and intermittently using Duolingo on my phone.
I'm not even sure I knew a non-mobile version of Duolingo existed until now and it's so much better. Even though I knew that turning off the work bank was better for learning I didn't do it because typing on my phone sucks.
And I had never used Anki before but earlier today I downloaded it and a top 5000 Spanish word deck and already went through my first lesson.
Even these two small things will help me a lot so thank you.